Montana City Grill has new owners

One of the area’s best-known restaurants is under new ownership. Chris Rehor, who spent nearly a decade as manager of Applebee’s, and partner David Hunter are the new owners of the Montana City Grill & Saloon five miles south of Helena.

Rehor, 45, has lived in the area for 25 years. He’s been looking for an opportunity to own a restaurant for several years, and said he was drawn to the Montana City Grill for several reasons: “The menu, the location, the views and the reputation,” he said. “It’s in a great spot off the interstate, and it’s a turnkey operation.”

Rehor doesn’t plan any immediate changes to the menu, though he said increased hours of operation are coming. Currently open from Wednesday through Sunday at 5 p.m., he said the restaurant will soon be open seven days a week, with the bar opening at 4 p.m.

He added that by this fall he hopes to be open for lunch, with a new lunch menu.

Rehor took possession of the business last week, but said he’s been coming in on his days off for the last month, learning the operation from previous owner Steve Vincelli. Vincelli is sticking around for another couple weeks to help Rehor learn the ropes, the new owner said.

Rehor said Vincelli will continue to make and market the restaurant’s line of barbecue sauces, and that the sauces will continue to be used in the restaurant.

Downtown history: Local historian and regular IR contributor Dennis McCahon caught me passing along a Helena urban legend in last week’s column about the sale of the Colwell Building downtown. I said that the building’s long, narrow shape fits the boundaries of the mining claim on which it sits.

Not true, McCahon says — though it’s been repeated so often that everyone believes it. Even though the building is near the spot where gold was first found in Last Chance Gulch, and was likely built on part of a placer claim, “the shape of the building has nothing to do with the shape of the claim,” he said. In fact, the mining claims were subdivided and property lines re-drawn when the mines were played out and it was time for buildings.

Instead, McCahon says the buildings are shaped the way they are because back then it was a pedestrian society.

“The long narrow shape of Main Street lots has to do with the need to pack as many business destinations as possible along the street, all within an easy walk,” he said. “How we build our urban landscape depends on the mode of transportation we expect to be dominant there — and it’s hard to overestimate the effect that cars have had on urban design.”

Email your Open for Business ideas to john.harrington@helenair.com.