Once an opera house, historic Park Rapids building will feature luxury apartments – Park Rapids Enterprise

Two of the oldest buildings in Park Rapids are getting a makeover.

Owned by Halo Property Management, the side-by-side brick buildings, located at Main Ave. and Third Street, have housed a number of businesses over the years, including the Rima Opera House, a general store, furniture store, two hardware stores, a grocery store and a funeral home.

Plans are for the bricks on the exterior of both buildings to be painted black and accented with gray vinyl siding.

The buildings will also be getting new awnings over the entrances to the businesses inside.

Hubbard County Historical Museum director Tammy Hensel found two old photos of the building on the corner. The first one shows the Rima Opera House.

The second photo shows Nelson’s grocery store occupying part of the building.

Contributed / Hubbard County Historical Society

The adjoining brick buildings served multiple purposes.

“I have no idea how it all was divided up over the years, but I know Coast to Coast and Our Own Hardware were right next to each other when I was there in the 1950s,” local history buff Rod Nordberg said. “When I was growing up nobody called it Rima’s and nobody mentioned the opera house.”

Nordberg pointed out that one of the photos shows the front on the Main Street side of the building is raised to accommodate the raised stage or proscenium at that end of the building.
“The public works may have been on the first floor of the building on the corner and the opera house stage on the second floor,” he said.

Nordberg said from what he has read about opera companies and what he learned from a Hubbard County Historical Society presentation by Alice Holtz about opera houses in the state, there were touring companies that went from town to town to put on shows at the local opera houses.

“Touring companies were used to performing in small towns,” he said. “It was basically vaudeville. It wasn’t like real opera, but more like a variety show on stage.”

Nordberg has scanned thousands of photos to add to the Hubbard County Historical Museum’s digital photo archive, including one that shows a large advertising sign for Bull Durham chewing tobacco on the side. He started scanning photos about 15 years ago.

Contributed / Hubbard County Historical Society.

“One of my hard drives has 34,000 photos on it,” he said. “They are divided into different folders by topic, so many are duplicates. Darryl Hensel and summer interns also did some of the scanning.”

He said the Minnesota State Historical Society would like to have all of the county historical societies upload their photos and other information to a cloud drive, and the Hubbard County Historical Society is exploring that option.

Sara Halik is one of the property’s three owners. She said she has not been to the uppermost part of the tallest building.

“There is a whole other level on the top of the building on the corner, but it’s not used for anything,” she said. “At one time, the building was three stories high. There’s an attic access, but I’ve never been up there. As far as I know, it’s just a voided space. The apartments have really high ceilings. It looks like one building but there are really two buildings together. We own both of them so we’re remodeling them together. The 10 apartments are also getting newer air-conditioning units.”

In addition to the five upstairs apartments in each building, the shorter building currently houses EcoWater, Wild Hair Salon and Moonbow Glow with a psychic medium/intuitive healer and the building on the corner is occupied by the Impact store and La Rancherita Mexican Market.

Three luxury apartments with granite countertops are being added downstairs.

“There was a space about six feet high above part of the ceiling downstairs, so we vaulted that part of the luxury apartments,“ she said.

Tentative plans are to rent out two units long-term and have one that is fully furnished available for short-term rentals.

Halik said that that unit could be rented by people who need a place to stay while a family member is in the hospital or who are here for a special event such as a wedding, reunion or family vacation.

This column was clipped out of an old issue of the Park Rapids Enterprise newspaper. The date and author of the column were not included in the clipping.

You’re a real old timer if you remember Albert Rima’s General Store. The building was constructed in 1883 of lumber hauled from Verndale, there being no railroad into Park Rapids at that time. Mr. Rima conducted his business from this wooden building for many years before erecting on the site the brick structure that is now known as the public service building on Main and West Third Street. In the new building, he continued operating a general store, and in later years, had a furniture store and undertaking establishment on the second floor. Mr. Rima also built the building now occupied by Elon Carey’s Coast to Coast store and Ralph Nordquist’s Our Own Hardware.

Lorie Skarpness has lived in the Park Rapids area since 1997 and has been writing for the Park Rapids Enterprise since 2017. She enjoys writing features about the people and wildlife who call the north woods home.