For nearly two years, the corner at 509 Nucleus Avenue sat behind paper-covered windows. Anyone driving through downtown Columbia Falls got used to it: the old bar sign gone, no lights on after dark, no clue about what might come next. Then, this spring, the windows came uncovered and Columbia Cafe opened for breakfast and lunch. The wait makes more sense once you know who bought the building and why they took so long to finish it.
Two Years Behind Paper Windows
The building itself is more than a century old. It was a dance hall at one point, a Chinese restaurant at another, and for nearly 60 years starting in 1965 it was the Columbia Bar, run by the Finberg family. By the time it closed for good in the fall of 2024, the bar had settled into its final identity as a classic dive, the kind of place locals loved for its rough edges and its weekly Taco Tuesdays behind the bar.
A local developer bought the building in 2023, kept it open for another year, then closed it. The storefront sat empty long enough that rumors started circulating about what might take its place. The answer turned out to be a family already working two doors down.
Johnny and Judy Truong moved to Northwest Montana about ten years ago after growing tired of the pace in Las Vegas. They started at local nail salons while they looked for a town to settle in, eventually opening Posh Nails and Spa on the north end of Nucleus Avenue in November 2020. A few years later they expanded into food, opening the fast-casual Teriyaki Kitchen a short walk from the salon. When the old Columbia Bar building came up for sale in mid-2025, the family bought it with a different concept in mind: a breakfast and lunch spot instead of another bar or takeout counter.
What actually slowed things down wasn't financing or permitting. Johnny's brother Tommy, who moved from Las Vegas to help run the family's restaurants after years working for a Korean barbecue chain, told the Flathead Beacon that the family did the entire remodel themselves rather than hiring it out. Since the space hadn't been updated in years, that meant stripping it down to the studs and rebuilding room by room on evenings and weekends, which is a slower process than most people watching from the sidewalk probably assumed.
What Changed on That Corner
- Then: Columbia Bar, a dive bar since 1965, known for Taco Tuesdays and decades of regulars, closed fall 2024
- Now: Columbia Cafe, breakfast and lunch, opened 2026, owned by the same family behind Teriyaki Kitchen and Posh Nails and Spa
The shift says something about how Nucleus Avenue tends to change hands. This wasn't an outside investor flipping a building for a quick concept. It was a family that had already built two other businesses on the same three blocks, choosing to expand slowly rather than reopen fast with someone else's money doing the work.
The Season's Other Hinge Point
Columbia Cafe's opening lands at the same moment the town's whole rhythm is shifting. Blue Moon Rodeo, the weekly Thursday night bull riding and barrel racing show out at the arena off Highway 2, ran every Thursday from Memorial Day through Labor Day. That run just wrapped. There's no Thursday night rodeo this week, and there won't be another one until next summer.
The Brash Rodeo Summer Series closed out its own season the same way, with a final night and awards on September 5 at the Halfmoon Road arena. What replaces both isn't a new weekly habit. It's a string of one-off events spaced through the rest of the month, which means residents who got used to just showing up on Thursdays now need to actually check dates.
Three Thursdays Left at the Market
The Columbia Falls Community Market has run every Thursday from 5 to 8pm since May, with local farmers, artisans, and food trucks setting up alongside live music. As of this week, only three of those Thursdays are left before the market's season ends: September 10, 17, and 24. After that, it's gone until next spring.
The Two Weekends That Close the Book
The middle of September brings a cluster of one-off events that together do the same job the weekly rodeo and market used to do, just compressed into a shorter window.
The weekend of September 12 carries two separate draws. The Columbia Falls Area Chamber of Commerce is hosting a free outdoor screening of The Parent Trap at Marantette Park, running from 7 to 8:30pm, with residents encouraged to bring a picnic dinner and a yard game. The same weekend, the Halfmoon Road arena hosts Beauties and the Beasts, a bull riding and barrel racing special featuring competitors from the PBR, NRA, and INFR circuits, giving the rodeo crowd one more night out before the season fully ends.
Later in the month, on September 26, Harvest Moon Fest takes over 700 Mooring Road, marking the unofficial start of the town's fall calendar.
Late in the month, Logan Health's Cedar Creek Marathon returns for its annual run along North Fork Road, starting at Big Creek Campground and finishing downtown at The COOP. The race includes a full marathon, half marathon, 10K, and 5K, and it exists for a reason beyond the run itself: it supports Logan Health's behavioral health and suicide-prevention work in the valley. The course borders Glacier National Park and follows the Flathead River and Cedar Creek through fall colors that are usually just turning by race day.
Taken together, the corner that finally reopened and the calendar that's quietly resetting behind it tell a similar story. Columbia Falls doesn't change overnight. It changes the way that renovation did, slowly, by people who already live here, building toward something that fits the town rather than replacing it.
If you're weighing what a home search actually looks like in a town where the businesses change hands this carefully, Tiffany MacKenzie knows Columbia Falls and the rest of the Flathead Valley from the inside. Let's Connect.
