Montana’s Entrepreneurs of the Year 2013, and owners of Headframe Spirits, John and Courtney McKee opened Headframe Spirits in 2012; currently they operate two distilleries in Butte, MT, and are now announcing plans to open a third facility in Butte with the capacity to rival that of large distilleries in Kentucky and Indiana.

Last summer, Headframe Spirits entered into a year long project with Butte Silver Bow Community Development, the Community Development Block Grant Program, and SMA Architects to evaluate three potential sites in Butte suitable for their needs of producing a full size barrel of whiskey every seven minutes. Although a value-added agricultural manufacturing facility, the goal of site selection included the need to create ties between agriculture, history, manufacturing, and tourism.

With preliminary engineering and architectural work complete and a suitable site selected, Headframe intends to enter into negotiations with the property owners - Butte Silver Bow County and Atlantic Richfield Company - with the goal to take over 20 acres of a former industrial site, the Kelley Mine Yard, to redevelop it into the largest distillery west of the Mississippi.

This project incorporates Headframe Spirits' proprietary continuous flow distillation technology to produce beverage alcohol both for Headframe Spirits' own brands and for bulk sale into the beverage alcohol industry as well.

All attempts will be made to maintain the history of the site, with production and restaurant space located in the historic hoist house. Barrel storage, packaging, shipping and receiving will be located in the 54,000 square foot Kelley garage building.

Headframe Spirits also envisions this site built out to act as an eastern anchor to Historic Uptown Butte, America, with a strong emphasis on tourism, outdoor event space, and economic development for our place in the world. On site overnight bungalows and the restaurant were incorporated into the master plan in order to promote a more fully integrated experience on site and in the Uptown.

Headframe Spirits anticipates that this project will create approximately 50 new long-term jobs through this venture and ownership will be maintained in Butte.

HELENA50 South Last Chance Gulch, Suite 1Helena, MT 59601 | ph. 406.442.4933www.architects-sma.com

BOZEMAN508 North Broadway, Suites A & BBozeman, MT 59715 | ph. 406.219.2216

Kelley Hoist House - circa 1968 (b & w images courtesy of the Library of Congress)

birds eye view - northeast

view looking westview looking east

Thank you,John and Courtney McKee