Project inspires new business

It’s a version of that age-old question: Can a leopard change its spots?

In the case of Missoula-based outdoors writer Peter Stark, he not only reconsidered his rigid stance on logging, but he eventually logged some of his own personal forest, and connected the dots enough to inspire a new small industry.

Stark, who describes himself as a “tree-hugging, deep-breathing, cardboard-recycling eco-liberal,” tells all in the August 2005 issue of Outside magazine. The story of his venture into wood flooring using small-diameter western larch reaches far beyond the article in an eco-based magazine, however.

“Peter Stark was doing some milling, testing fir and larch for flooring,” said Christy Hollenback, a lumber sales representative for Tricon Timber, a traditional stud mill based in St. Regis, Mont.

“He’d done a floor for his wife’s dance studio and liked what he saw, so he approached us. The big thing was that he wanted a chain-of-custody for the wood taken off his forest.”

Tricon’s assistant plant manager, Angelo Ververis, said the chain-of-custody feature, favored by sustainable advocates, gets a lot of attention at Tricon. He said the mill has a history of working with diverse groups, and the time is especially right for creative thinking because of the need to thin dense Western forests.

Hollenback and Ververis described the route that brought the larch flooring idea from concept to actual product.

Montana Community Development Corp http://www.mtcdc.org/

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