Manito Super 1 Foods Inc., a Spokane-based company owned by Ron McIntire, of Hayden, Idaho, plans to open a Super 1 Foods supermarket in Whitefish, Mont., says project spokesman Mike Winger.


Winger is vice president of store development for URM Stores Inc., the big Spokane-based grocery distributor which is providing design services for the project. URM is owned by a group of independent grocers who buy much of their inventory from the cooperative, and McIntire currently is URMs board chairman.


Winger says the 55,000-square-foot Whitefish store will be located in the Mountain Mall, that towns largest shopping center, and is expected to employ between 100 and 125 people. It probably will open around May of next year, he says. Bodell Construction, of Missoula, is the general contractor on the project, the estimated cost of which wasnt disclosed.


The store will be McIntires third Super 1 Foods outlet in Montanas Flathead County and ninth overall, Winger says. McIntires eight other stores are located in Kalispell, Columbia Falls, Stevensville, and Hamilton, Mont.; and Hayden, Rathdrum, Coeur dAlene, and Post Falls, Idaho. His companys name derives from the fact that he formerly operated a Super 1 Foods store here in the Manito Shopping Center. He sold that store to Spokane-based Rosauers Supermarkets Inc. about nine years ago.


A partnership owned by McIntire and John Young, of Spokane, bought about five acres of land at Whitefishs Mountain Mall for the Super 1 Foods store there, and the two men also are real estate partners in all of McIntires other stores, Winger says.


The Whitefish project required razing a 28,000-square-foot store there called The Food Pavilion, which closed about Oct. 1, and an adjoining vacant variety-store space, Winger says. That demolition work was completed recently, the concrete footings for the new building now have been poured, and the block walls are going up, he says. The new Whitefish store will look at lot like the 49,000-square-foot Super 1 Foods store that McIntire opened in nearby Columbia Falls last year, he says.


Of the possibility of additional store-development projects, Winger says McIntire and Young are anxious, if the opportunity is correct, to take on another one. He adds, Ron has always updated and remodeled his stores and that, I think, is why hes so successful.


He says McIntire is just finishing a major remodel of his 55,000-square-foot Kalispell supermarket. That project, he says, has included building a new storefront and installing all new refrigeration systems and cases.