BEMIDJI — A history mystery has been unraveling since what appears to be a basement was found underneath a city of Bemidji parking lot.
Crews responded in mid-April to a sinking parking lot on the 300 block of Minnesota Avenue, across the street from Raphael’s Bakery Cafe, to investigate the collapse.
At the Beltrami County Historical Society, volunteer researchers Lois Jenkins and Ashton Loebs began digging into the historical records from that block. They found that it was once three addresses that comprised the Saar Motor Co. from the late 1940s until the lot was created sometime in the 1970s. The Saar Motor Co., according to historic phone directories, moved to Highway 2 beginning in the early '70s.
Downtown business owner Kevin Johnson has been keeping an eye on the pit developments, and shared that his dad, Keith Johnson, used to work for Saar Motor Co.
"He’s been telling me for probably 20 years that there was a basement over there ... [and that] parts of it were finished, there were apartments, and that they just paved over it."
While Johnson said he always goes along with what his dad said, he added, "I never knew whether it was true until recently. I saw the pictures, and I said, 'It's true.'"
Jenkins and Loebs shared in their research that the room uncovered by public works crews last week was likely part of the apartment the proprietor, Al Saar, used to live in.
While documents and artifacts were discovered, many were damaged in subsequent rainfall after being uncovered, with the salvageable documents currently in freezers in hopes of preservation.
