Spintering at the grindstone

I'm currently wading through three-plus hours of interviews from the past few days, transcribing the good bits and trying to ignore the points when my recorder decided to be a flaky douche. Two features coming up, the first due on Thursday. Struggling to find a way to keep my sanity intact, one that doesn't involve liver damage or Super Mario on Wii.

On the upside, I dropped in to visit some family friends in Choteau. Got the skinny on a few childhood friends, one of whom just started grad school in St. Paul. She's finding it too difficult to balance her treasured job at an independent pizza place, but she's finding urban planning an amazing avenue of advanced study. And at this point in time, it's a field much in need of new blood.

Realizing that I don't actually have much of interest to say, I'll default to some big Missoula news. I wrote a few weeks back about Smurfit-Stone Container Corp.'s shuttering of the Frenchtown mill. Operations were extended through last Thursday, but the plume is gone and so now are the jobs. The plant is in the midst of "mothballing," as the corporate office says. If that news wasn't bad enough, 55 more jobs will disappear March 10 when Macy's abandons Missoula. It's a bit of news made doubly troubling when one considers the department store's importance in the city's up-and-coming Downtown Master Plan, a bit of business planning that's been in the works for two years. Crandall Arambula, a Portland-based consultant working on the project, called Macy's a "downtown anchor." The idea is that Macy's sucks shoppers from Southgate Mall and Reserve Street, offering a national chain experience and an open door to smaller, locally-owned shopping options. Without it, the city and the consultants are at a loss. See the editorial Jessica and I wrote here.

In a week dominated by closures, Brady's Sportsmen's Surplus also announced it's tagging out. The owner has been a business owner in Missoula for decades, and says he's just looking to retire. No recession issues, apparently. Not like Moose Creek Mercantile, another downtown shop that said Friday that it's folding. Looks like those economists who said we're out of the thick of it spoke too soon, and the recession is finally rearing its ugly head in Missoula beyond the world of real estate and timber.

Too heavy? Too depressing? Well, Bret and I beat the last level of Super Mario this afternoon. I'd planned to hit the slopes on those new Rossignol 80ti Classics I got for Christmas, but spending all day yesterday on the job wiped me out. I'll be in Red Lodge soon anyway (next weekend), and I'll use that as the kick-off for my "ski at least one day a month" plan for 2010. Shouldn't be too hard. If you want to know the secret, track down a copy of the winter edition of Montana Headwall. I suggest you read the piece by Alex Sakariassen. I hear tell it's pretty good.