Billions of reasons for leaders to be excited in Billings

Billings' new City Hall, which is the renovated federal building at the intersection of 3rd Avenue North and North 26th Street (Photo by Darrell Ehrlick of the Daily Montanan).

When most Montanans think of growth, sprawling communities and building projects, it’s nearly impossible not to begin with Bozeman and Missoula — both college towns, and both the focus of countless stories ranging from home prices to being “discovered” after the COVID pandemic.

But if you want to talk investment, the state’s largest city and the most prominent corridor through its downtown will see more than $1.2 billion in construction during the next five years.

Much of that building is dedicated to the city’s largest industry, healthcare. Intermountain Health, which recently merged with the SCL system, has announced a historic construction of a new hospital to the east of where the current hospital facility is located. That new facility won’t just expand medical care for the next generation, it will help change the landscape of downtown’s medical complex which stretches from nearly the rimrock cliffs that line the city to the heart of the downtown.

But more than that, Billings will also move from its cramped City Hall and the different departments sprinkled throughout the city into a completely renovated former federal complex that will breathe new life into the eastern part of downtown that is slowly but certainly being transformed.

And the current City Hall building, which is really two buildings and a hodgepodge of add-ons and remodels, will eventually become home to a seven-story business-oriented hotel catering to business travelers and tourists, something that city officials say is sorely needed.

These massive construction projects and investments in downtown, plus recent major renovations, will change the complexion of downtown, including along North 27th Street, the main corridor that connects the airport atop the Rims with Interstate 90, as it goes through the heart of downtown.

Billings has not seen the explosive growth of the Gallatin Valley and Bozeman, nor has it seen housing prices and options steadily soar higher for years like Missoula. But the largest city in Montana is something less volatile, growing a steady clip year-over-year as it stretches its boundaries toward Laurel to the west, Lockwood to the east and Billings Heights to north. That steady growth of usually 2% to 3% has meant the city doesn’t get as much attention, but is quietly going through a rebuilding renaissance of its own.

Katy Schreiner, the executive director of Downtown Billings, said the downtown’s next transformation has been a bit of serendipity. New interest in downtown, plus several large properties changing ownership, has brought about new development organically. It hasn’t just been the city. It hasn’t just been Intermountain Health.

“Many of these old buildings were owned by family trusts or out-of-state owners, and they weren’t necessarily as engaged as those living here. But, I don’t think people realized what could happen when there is three to five significant turnovers in property ownership,” Schreiner said.

The old federal courts building which will soon house Billings’ City Hall went from private ownership to the city. A key piece of property became the home of the Billings Symphony Orchestra. And retail continues to flock to downtown, as Yesteryears, a popular antique mall, moved to the ground level of the Hart-Albin building which had went several decades without retail. Nearby, Music Villa opened its Billings location after acquiring Guitars and Amps, to become a premier music dealer specializing in guitars and basses.

“People saw the opportunity during COVID and they wanted to relocate. And that spurred reinvestment and then we started seeing the dominos fall,” Schreiner said.

That renewed interest in downtown has spurred on new housing, including a multi-story housing project that will go where Downtown Billings Alliance headquarters are located. That building will have 120 units and 12 floors. Like a future motel project, it will change the downtown skyline.

Schreiner said that studies point out that the downtown area has a shortage of more than 200 housing units so the new construction will hardly keep up with the demand, which should hopefully spur even more development and redevelopment, Schreiner said.

She said the landscape has also changed since COVID. People and businesses aren’t looking for large office spaces, which leaves room for redevelopment. But it’s also not as simple as taking office space and converting it to housing either.

She said as more businesses and retail come back downtown from the Heights or the west end, the question remains: How can we support the workers of downtown?

New City Hall

Even though City Hall is located downtown, the true City Hall is spread throughout five buildings across the city because of the 38,000-square-foot footprint of the current, cramped city hall, which has converted even storage closets into makeshift offices, said assistant city manager Kevin Iffland.

That leaves city facilities director John Caterino managing a hodgepodge of buildings with various mechanical systems and issues.

The newly renovated City Hall shifts the headquarters several blocks to the northeast, giving it the ability to consolidate and co-locate with some of the Yellowstone County services. For its part, the Yellowstone County building long ago outgrew its seven-story space, and county services are somewhat spread between the two buildings.

For customers, especially those who are building or developing property, a new city hall means a one-stop experience instead of as many as three just to get approvals and permits. It also means 90,000 square feet of actual office space — enough for the current staff and future growth.

The old federal courtroom, imposing and cavernous, is being converted into the City Council Chambers which will mean more accommodations for the public. The same is true for the two municipal courts.

“It will be the first time detectives and patrol will be in the same building,” said Iffland, the former Billings Police Department officer.

“This is a 50-year solution,” said Iffland.

For the city it means the convenience of having all services centrally located. For staff, it means not having to travel from building to building to hold a meeting. It also means that the city will need fewer expensive-but-necessary items like copiers and printers.

“The great thing is we’re not siloed,” said Jessica Fust of the Billings Planning Department.

New hotel

Bill Honaker came back to his hometown of Billings more than two decades ago, thinking he’d spend just a few years here. Since then, Honaker has developed some of the best-known restaurants in the “Magic City,” including Walker’s.

Before moving back home, he worked in commercial real estate acquisitions on the East Coast, but after, he found himself transforming the complexion of downtown Billings, creating a renaissance and renewed interest.

“Walker’s was going to be a project but it turned out to be a 30-year one,” Honaker said.

Even as other Montana communities were “discovered,” the downtown transformation took Billings from an aging collection of retail shops and bars to a place that has fine dining, entertainment and a growing group of eclectic retailers.

“The skyline during the next five to 10 years is going to change considerably, and that’s awesome,” Honaker said.

In other words, if you build it in Billings, they’ll come.

The seven-story hotel he and partner Don Cape will build will be seven stories and 140 rooms, with retail and dining on the ground floor.

“The next generation of professionals want amenities and common areas,” Honaker said.

So, the hotel will be in a modern European style.

Honaker also said that the Billings community is developing a reputation for finding a way to accomplish development.

“I can’t tell you how many people have said, ‘We don’t care what you do, just get it done,’” Honaker said. That attitude has even been true when it comes to review, design and planning — not always easy areas for other cities.

It has been 45 years since the last hotel was built in downtown Billings, the Double Tree, which became the tallest building in Montana in the early 1980s until it was eclipsed by the First Interstate tower.

Honaker has experience in hospitality, too. Just beyond the traditional boundaries of downtown Billings, Honaker developed the Home2Suites nearby the medical corridor on North 27th Street. Honaker understands the market and its needs.

“This isn’t about us as the developers, it’s really about economic development downtown,” Honaker.

New hospital + Old hospital

North 27th Street is also home to the two largest healthcare facilities in Montana, Billings Clinic and Intermountain Health-St.Vincent. Once institutions several blocks apart that served different religious communities, the two campuses have expanded to touch each other as they now serve entire regions, including parts of three states.

More than two years after the SCL Health system merged with Intermountain, a former parking lot is now the location where another hospital will go, an addition to the three-building complex that current serves as the St. Vincent hospital.

The new hospital will likely not likely go online until 2028, and though no cost estimates have been publicly released, most peg the number at more than $1 billion, making the bulk of new building in terms of dollars.

But the building will allow renovation and possible expansion of the campus that is already at the heart of the largest medical corridor and community in the state. The bed count will rise from 253 to 295, but hospital leaders told the Daily Montanan in 2022, that the increase in number of beds was more significant than it may look because long hospital stays are becoming less common.

The new hospital may allow Intermountain to repurpose some of the older buildings which have been cobbled together out of sheer necessity as the community has grown.

The new hospital will also allow any of its rooms to be turned into intensive care, helpful for situations like COVID-19 when intense hospitalization was needed, but there were a limited number of beds in the intensive-care unit.

Intermountain is adding more family rooms and designing patient rooms for family members who may opt to spend the night with a loved one. Even the emergency room bay is being designed as an indoor drive-through so that patients aren’t exposed to the freezing cold or blistering hot temperature swings of Montana weather.

Hospital leaders have told the Daily Montanan that while the health system has land on the west end of Billings, it wanted to remain close to the interstate, airport and downtown.

Plenty of space still available

Schreiner said that maybe what’s most impressive about the downtown building is what’s not being built.

Yet.

Nestled along the North 27th Street corridor are nearly two full city blocks that are open and poised for development and redevelopment.

Within the past year, property owners have cleared an old gas station, restaurant, and bank which has opened up space for redevelopment. The Billings Gazette building, located at 401 N. Broadway, has been for sale for several years, and the brick behemoth that takes up nearly a full block has several stories that could be redeveloped or even added onto.

That makes nearly two full blocks in the heart of Montana’s largest city that is just sitting waiting for the right deal, Schrenier said.

Most of the time, she said, developers find land, but not enough room for parking, or vice-versa. But with the large footprint of available land, the best development could be yet-to-come.

“We just don’t see opportunities like this,” Schreiner said. “We don’t want to squander our opportunities because these are something that only comes up every few decades, if not a century,” Schreiner said.