Annual Creston Auction pays for new building

In the last 47 years the Creston Auction has helped the small volunteer fire department do some big things.

And this year, money from the Creston Auction helped make the final payments on a new training and meeting building that was finished recently. The 3,000-square foot building was moved on to the site at the department’s Lake Blaine station over the summer. It had previously been a classroom at Bigfork High School.  The building cost about $75,000, including costs to have it moved, Creston fire chief Gary Mahugh said. The annual Creston Auction, which runs April 6-7 this year, paid for 90 percent of that, according to Mahugh. What was a former classroom is now a functional training facility, kitchen and living quarters for firefighters.

“The building had had a lot of kid use, but it was built extremely well,” Mahugh said. “It’s not fancy, but it’s functional.” The building was moved in four pieces to the current location. The final touches were put on a month ago.

The building will allow Creston to now become a host for regional trainings, Mahugh said. It would have cost over $300,000 to build a similar facility, but the Bigfork School District offered to sell it to Creston Fire Department, since the Bigfork Fire Department had no space for it, Mahugh said.

Getting the building purchased, moved and renovated reflects on the “can-do” spirit of the Creston Volunteer Fire Department, Mahugh said. “Creston is a visionary department,” he said. “We seldom say we can’t do something, and this building is indicative of what 35 people in the department saying ‘we can do this.’ I’m extremely proud of our personnel for helping put this together.”

The auction raises about $35,000 annually through the sales of consigned items sold by live auction. This year there will be many auctions going at once, with the large items for sale on April 7.

After the building was completed, it was donated by the Creston Firefighter Association to the Creston Fire Department, which is a state-recognized fire district.

Creston recently installed new radio equipment on Mount Aeneas in the Jewel Basin. The equipment will allow the fire department to have better communication in what Mahugh called “dead spots” of the Creston area, and will provide radio coverage in the South Fork of the Flathead, where they currently have no coverage. “That’s a big thing for us,” Mahugh said. “We now have better coverage than before.”

The fire department also completed the purchase of land adjacent to the Creston Fire Station, where the auction itself takes place. All this could not have been done without the financial support of the Creston Auction. “This building is a success story of the auction,” Mahugh said.