In the latest deals transforming Boulder’s Main Street, Rusty Giulio and his family have bought the O-Z Motel and are nearing a purchase of Hardware Hank, targeting businesses that have anchored the city’s downtown for decades.
Roks Ventures, a company controlled by Giulio and his four daughters, closed Dec. 14 on the O-Z, Giulio said. Dan Gosselin, who had owned the motel since 1992, said the sale price was $300,000. “After 31 years running this place, it’s time to retire,” he said.
Giulio said Roks would change the name of the motel to the Roks Inn. He and his daughters Jesse, Kayla, Whitney and Soja planned to install new signage and lighten the building’s facade, creating “more of a ranch-style” look. They have hired Ed Lewing to manage the property, and expect to make room reservations available online.
Meanwhile, Cory Kirsch, who has been trying to sell the Hardware Hank business and the building it occupies at 121 North Main Street for two years, said that he expects a deal with Giulio will close in late January. Kirsch said he would retain, for now, the lot and utility building behind the store.
Giulio declined to discuss the Hardware Hank acquisition.
For Giulio, who has been Boulder’s mayor since 2018, the two purchases would add to his portfolio of downtown assets. His company, RGR Properties, owns the buildings housing the Windsor Bar and the former Elkhorn Bistro; and in June, it bought the building at 209 North Main St. at which Boulder Cash 56 operates.
Earlier this year, Giulio sold a block of buildings at the northeast corner of Main Street and Centennial Avenue to a company owned by Stu Goodner.
Giulio said the latest activity has been motivated by a desire to “preserve our lifestyle.” He explained: “My fear is that the big money is coming this direction” and that “we the people who came into southern Montana years ago won’t be able to afford it anymore.” He hopes that preserving and upgrading the O-Z will attract more visitors to Boulder while keeping it accessible.
“It’s kind of a fun little project,” he added.
Kirsch said that Giulio plans to continue operating the hardware store, but under a new brand. He said Giulio also plans to refurbish the currently unused space above the store, converting it into rental apartments. “It’s a cool old building. You could do a lot of things with it,” Kirsch said.
The hardware store, then doing business under the Gamble brand, and its building were purchased in 1972 by Kirsch’s parents, Dave and Rhonda. They switched to the Coast to Coast brand in the 1980s, and then to Ace in the 1990s. Cory Kirsch became the owner in 1999, he said.
Kirsch said the business thrived through much of that time: The Montana Developmental Center (MDC) was an important customer, he said, as were the Montana Tunnels mine outside Jefferson City and the area logging community. “They would come in all the time for lubricants and chainsaw parts,” Kirsch said.
Beginning in the 1990s, all three of those economic drivers disappeared, with the MDC mostly shutting its operations in 2015. The business gradually declined as more shoppers went online or to big box stores in Helena and Butte.
And Kirsch said that, after he was elected to the County Commission in 2015, he spent less and less time at the hardware store. “Small-town stores need an owner here,” he observed. “People want to come in and talk to the owner.”
“There was a fork in the road: Do I want to be a commissioner and be in politics, or do I want to make the store work?” He decided in 2021 to put the business up for sale.
The O-Z property was purchased in 1946 by Les Oertel, according to newspaper accounts, county records and those at the Heritage Center in Boulder. In 1952, Oertel and his partner Fred Zendron (hence the O and Z) built a new, seven-unit motel. Lyle and Esther Woodward bought the property in 1958 and added five units.
The records are unclear on what happened next, but the motel appears to have been owned in the late 1970s and 80s by the Axt and Brekstad families. It was purchased in 1988 by Fred and Bonnie Brown of Whitehall, who in turn sold in 1992 to Gosselin, who had moved to Boulder from Minnesota.
Gosselin has kept the cottages on a separate lot at the rear of the main motel. Giulio says that Roks Ventures has an option to buy the cottages in the future.
