Throughout August and September, the two 20-something entrepreneurs who created the Montana Sauna Co. were gearing up for the sauna and cold plunge business’s early October grand opening at its new high-visibility digs on the Westside. The historic brick building they’d leased, at the corner of Toole Avenue and Scott Street, which most recently had been a private wood shop, was coming to life.
Outside they hung a Montana Sauna Co. sign, planted flower boxes and docked a 45-foot cylindrical sauna to the back of the building. Inside — which they couldn’t wait to show off to expectant customers, some of whom had already purchased memberships — they installed cold plunge tubs, changing rooms and private showers, and arranged a hip lounge area and tea station, all set to a fresh coat of paint on the walls. They distributed flyers around town and posted Instagram reels inviting the 4,000-plus followers they’d accumulated since introducing the business to the Missoula area last winter, first offering pop-up events and then temporarily parking their 15-person mobile sauna outside Western Cider.
But when the grand opening came, on Oct. 4, Nick Johnson and Luke Raddue’s startup was open for mere hours before the City of Missoula poured cold water on the whole thing. Now, instead of running what they view as a health-focused, community-building enterprise at the beginning of prime sauna season, they find themselves navigating rigid city zoning and health codes. The business’s doors will likely remain closed for months as bills pile up.
They say Montana Sauna Co. is about bringing “bathing culture,” with its social and health benefits, to Missoula.
“The U.S. doesn’t have that culture,” Johnson says. “I mean, do you want liquor stores and casinos and pot shops, or do you want a vital community center?”
“Do you want liquor stores and casinos and pot shops, or do you want a vital community center?”
Such questions are what zoning codes are for, and the hodgepodge of land-use designations around the roundabout at Scott and Toole is just one example of an unwieldy system Missoula launched its sweeping code reform process in order to fix.
Built in 1930, the building Johnson and Raddue hope will house Montana Sauna Co. was originally a grocery store called the Toole Avenue Food Center, but for years the property, not even two blocks away from neighborhood anchor Draught Works Brewery, has been conspicuously underused. Its mixed-use designation would welcome, say, a daycare or plant nursery, but not any business that offers “personal improvement.” They knew this, they admit, but, determined to open in the fall and short on cash (the rezone application fee typically costs around $5,000 and the process lasts several months), they opted to forge ahead anyway.
“If they would have gone through the rezoning process back in July, they’d be about three months into it now — probably close to it being complete,” says Walter Banzinger, the deputy director of Missoula Development Services. “Our goal is to promote economic development with health, safety, and welfare in mind. To get businesses on the street. We want them to succeed, but we need them to follow the rules that everybody else does when they’re establishing a business.”
Johnson and Raddue say two architecture firms have advised them to sit tight until spring, when the city’s expected to adopt the rewritten development code. But they can’t wait that long.
“We have to be open in our busy season to pad through the off season,” Johnson says. “If you push this off, it just might not happen. I mean, this building should be a focal point for this neighborhood, but instead it’s been a wood shop, a weed-growing facility that had mold growing in it. There’s a reason why no one’s tried to do what we are trying to do here — the zoning is incorrect.”
As of mid-November, Montana Sauna Co. was seeking a change-of-use permit. They’re also working to resolve health code issues because cold plunge tanks are subject to the same rules the city applies to public swimming pools. The best-case scenario, Johnson and Raddue say, would be to open in January.
“We want them to succeed, but we need them to follow the rules that everybody else does when they’re establishing a business.”
In the meantime, they’re resorting to a crowdfunding campaign on Kickstarter that’s scheduled to launch on Dec. 6. They hope locals who want to see the old Toole Avenue Food Center become a community sauna will chip in to help cover rent and the costs of getting up to code. A grand opening do-over likely depends on it.
The setback is a shock to the system for the duo dipping a toe into entrepreneurship since being inspired by how saunas and cold plunging, they say, help Johnson with mental health challenges, and Raddue with chronic pain. But they believe those already impacted by the business will rally behind it.
“Montana Sauna Co. already feels like a community fixture to me,” says Micah Sewell, one of its earliest patrons. “It’s something we’ve needed. Every time I’ve been there, I’ve had conversations with friends and strangers that never would’ve happened otherwise.”
