With Phase II in motion for Montana -- it is a sign of business being able to reopen or open more fully, plus it will end the 14-day quarantine for visitors. Good news for tourism. The Chamber has created a Business Reopening Guide that any business can access and utilize -- find on front page of our website www.helenachamber.com. Groups of 50 or less can be held.
After a couple of months of not a lot of business news, this week I have a lot of tidbits of business news. While some projects are not large, it is heartwarming to see projects moving forward in spite of the recent business shutdown that impacted so many of our businesses.
East Helena is quite the growing city in the last few years. The new East Helena High School is rapidly approaching completion with the gymnasium getting the flooring put in. It will be a beautiful place for students to enter in the fall.
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The Missouri River Brewing Company -- owned by Scott Hansing, Tim Moran and Jaramia Bunker -- is also becoming closer to their projected opening in late summer in July/August with their brewing equipment all here and the nearly 6,000 sq. ft. building looking amazing. They are located at 451 Spencer Court in East Helena, east of Heritage Foods (off of the last stop light on Hwy 12 East). Exciting news is that they will have Karmadillo’s within their location. Karmadillo’s was previously at 139 Reeders Alley and boasted amazing Mexican food.
There is a new building going up directly east of the Last Chance Casino on Last Chance Gulch. This is an additional building for the Center for Mental Health and is being built by Diamond Construction.
With heavy lunch and dinner traffic through most all of Helena’s fast food restaurants, most of them have done very well as they adapted to no indoor dining (now open at 50-75%). Taco Bell had a setback with possibly some plumbing issues but hopes to reopen as soon as repairs are made. Their building was just built last year.
The next challenge for area restaurants could be the supply of beef for their burgers with the packing companies closed and local meat cutting businesses are slammed picking up the slack. The good in this might be that more local/Montana meat might be showing up in our eating establishments.
There is a new bakery going in on the west side at 1442 Euclid called the Sunflower Bakery. We will keep you posted as we get more info on this.
The Montana Academy of Salons is working to locate in the former Hair Hair Salon location at 440 S. Park Ave.
Suds Hut has put in (or is in the process of putting in) a drive up window at their restaurant on North Montana Avenue. This will be great for their customers pickup up their amazing chicken.
Plans for the former Independent Record building on Cruse and 6th are starting to formulate. Sounds like some retail and professional offices are being looked at with potential for some residential in the future.
Shodair Hospital has filed its permits for their new operational building to expand their services.
Walmart has a Claire’s Boutique store going into the front of their store. Claire’s is known for fashion accessories and jewelry plus other beauty products.
Watch for several buildings to be demolished along Last Chance Gulch as preparations are under way for the new Seeley Building (the former city bus station). The bus building, the little brown building next to it and another storage building will come down to accommodate this 3-4 story office building.
Starbucks will break ground soon on a new location in the former Capital Hill Mall location. They also were planning a location on North Montana Ave. – not sure of the current status of that.