OGDEN — Thaine Fischer, managing partner at Fischer Regan Enterprises, makes it clear that he doesn’t build beautiful buildings in Ogden.

“I didn’t do the building. I just kicked out all of the birds and raccoons and cleaned it back up,” he said.

However, for 20 years, he’s been working to rehabilitate several historic downtown properties into properties that can thrive in the modern day.

“After moving here, initially, we were doing some residential real estate,” he said. “I just fell in love with commercial historical architecture in downtown, the buildings — so much potential.”

He said that some of his experience growing up in Montana gave him insight on how a historic city can be influenced by a nearby recreation opportunity.

“I saw how the ski resorts impacted the small town next to the resorts,” he said. “When I looked at Snowbasin and Powder Mountain and … I think it’s Nordic (Valley) now, but Wolf Mountain, I’m like, ‘There’s no way the ski industry comes into this valley without having some sort of economic impact on Ogden.’ That’s why we felt we could make a living here. We felt that it had a bright future, and so we moved here in 2006.”

Fischer the first building that he bought in Ogden was the Business Information Center on Washington Boulevard followed by the former Star Noodle building.

However, timing would put some rehabilitation plans on hold.

“We bought right into the Recession — 2008, ’09, ’10 were not fun years for us,” he said. “We had wanted to start the adaptive reuse process immediately, but unfortunately, that halted about anything to do with real estate and a lot of the plans of the city.”

Fischer said redevelopment plans didn’t really start coming together until 2014.

“We ended up redeveloping the Star Noodle,” he said. “We rehabbed that, put the sign up and opened up the Star Noodle, which we opened as Zucca’s … there was such a huge community outpouring that came out and watched the sign get turned on and all of that. We were like, ‘Wow, this is kind of cool.'”

He said it’s only been the start.

“We just started buying some of these older buildings in the downtown core, primarily along 25th Street and Washington Boulevard,” he said. “We’ve renovated over 11 buildings in the downtown core; we’ve acquired 14.”

Buildings that Fischer has helped rehabilitate include The Monarch, the Star Noodle Building — now home to Stella’s Italian Restaurant — and Sola Salons.

Fischer said their focus has largely been on downtown Ogden and preserving its historic character.

“Everything we do is in the downtown core,” he said. “We believe in the downtown core.”

He said that he’s seen Ogden come a long way in historic preservation.

“I look at this architectural legacy that was left in Ogden after the turn of the century,” he said. “These buildings are just phenomenal. We’ve been doing one per year in the last 15 years, so we’ve done about 14 buildings.”

Fischer said he’d love to see more of the community step up and rehabilitate older structures throughout the community.

“I wish there were five of me,” he said. “There’s a lot of buildings within the community that have been owned  for years and years and years and nobody does anything with them. I understand being the first into a market like that can be scary, but I think there’s a track record of success where these buildings are getting adopted, they’re getting leased.”