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Known for its haunted hospital tours over the past few decades, the old St Ignatius Hospital has rested on a hill on the edge of Colfax for more than a century.
The building and adjacent buildings were purchased in April by the Colfax couple and small-town tycoons Austin and Laura Storm, who are now neglected and buried under leaves and undergrowth.
The two have great ambitions for the room – if they can fix it before it collapses.
The Storms, who own the curated vintage shop Bully For You in Colfax and Moscow consignment store Storm Cellar, said their purchase of the space was a seven year story. They said they saw the building for the first time in the spring of 2014.
“When we saw it, I think we had two reactions. One was, ‘I can’t believe this cool building is here and we didn’t know it,’ and the other was, ‘Somebody has to save this,’ “Laura said. “Because it could easily fall down and go away … it’s put on the list of buildings that you say, ‘How did people let go of that?’ ”
Austin said they had made serious attempts to buy the building several times since that first encounter, but it never quite worked out. At one point the room was sold to a Spokane man who turned out to be a fraud.
Austin said the Spokane man was responsible for organizing the Fyre Festival of Coeur d’Alene golf tournaments and is now serving an 11-year prison sentence.
After St Ignatius’s property returned to its previous owners, they contacted the Storms. The call came just as the couple was able to support such a project again. Austin said it had been a tumultuous year as the pandemic choked off revenue from their existing businesses.
At this early stage, the two have a skimpy, multi-faceted plan to turn the space into a convention center, boutique hotel, and art-focused common room, but said, “We know there is room for its development.”
“I always have too many ideas for my ideas – this is the first project that … feels like everything might fit,” Austin said. “If you have an idea like ‘Oh, there should be artist studios and rural artist residences’ – that fits or ‘There should be a brewery or a distillery here’ – that fits.”
However, the storm’s first, and possibly toughest, hurdle will be repairing 20 years of water damage that has left beams to rot and sags through the center of the building affecting every floor. The two have launched a campaign on crowdfunding site Indiegogo to pay for this early phase of repair and have an anonymous donor who has pledged to raise up to $ 50,000.
“This first stage of jacking up the collapsed floors so we can fix the roof is kind of a rescue mission, and honestly we’re not exactly sure how much it will cost,” Austin said. “We know we have to do this part of it to get a building.”
Austin said St. Ignatius was founded by nuns in 1893 and was Whitman County’s primary hospital until 1968. It then served alternately as a geriatric care facility and apartment complex until it became uninhabitable in 2003. A five-story facility with its peeling paint and crumbling slatted and plastered walls has hosted “haunted hospital” tours, more than a handful of squatters and a pair of pigeons hitting storms Bert and Ernie have called.
The property includes a number of adjoining, also dilapidated buildings, including a smaller structure that used to be a nursing school, vine-covered root cellars, and a boiler house connected to the hospital by underground steam tunnels that are now flooded.
When walking through tall, dark corridors and the occasional musty pool of water, they would often stop to point out fascinating, brightly lit rooms or picturesque views framed by tall arched windows. Throughout the tour, the Storms’ well-documented enthusiasm for old things was clearly evident as they cooed over rubble-strewn real terrazzo floors, Second Empire architecture, and original mirrored windows.
“There’s just something really nice about the way people have built and designed things that I really think we lost – I mean, there are things about this building that you (today) don’t can do, ”said Laura.
“The skills aren’t there either,” Austin agreed in her practiced way of talking to each other without stopping.
“You just feel like it’s this little gem and if you can hold on to it you might be able to make it 100 years,” added Laura.
The two admitted that the project may be their most ambitious yet in terms of money and time, but they don’t seem put off. Their voices got excited as they speculated on the future of space.
“We think of it as kind of a lifelong project – I mean, we hope it doesn’t take that long, but… if you’re working on your house and you think it’s never finished, I’m like we’re going on this thing always optimize something, ”said Laura.
“Life is about finding projects big enough to dedicate a large part of your life to,” agreed Austin.
Those interested in following the storms as they work to improve St Ignatius Hospital can follow them on Instagram at instagram.com/stignatiuscolfax/ or contribute to the cause at igg.me/at/stignatius.
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