Billings Development Thread

[Skyrise406]

For general information on any major/minor developements in Billings, Montana.

[Skyrise406]

By DIANE COCHRAN Of The Billings Gazette Staff
Published on Thursday, July 20, 2006.


A $12 million overhaul planned for St. Vincent Healthcare's pediatrics floor will transform the unit into a regional children's hospital, officials announced on Wednesday.

The three-year project will convert the hospital's pediatric intensive care unit from a wardlike setting into a department with private rooms and remodel the floor's other patient rooms.

It also will set aside space for babies who are released from the neonatal intensive care unit but aren't ready to go home and establish a pediatric emergency department with its own waiting area.

The result will be a hospital within a hospital that could eventually have a separate street entrance, officials said.

"This is a great investment in regional children's care," said Dave Irion, executive director of the St. Vincent Healthcare Foundation.

Hospital officials hope the St. Vincent Regional Pediatric Hospital will allow sick children and their families to stay in Montana for treatment. Kids heal better closer to home, said LaWanna Moran, a certified pediatric nurse.

"It's a much more healing environment for the family as well to not have to be separated from each other," Moran said. "Whoever goes with the kid loses their support system."

Ailments such as head injuries, respiratory problems and metabolic disorders that now require care in Denver, Salt Lake City, Seattle or Minneapolis will be treatable in the new St. Vincent center.

"We want to expand and support the region," said Nancy Kallem, the hospital's vice president of patient care services. "This is a huge state, and pediatric services are sparse."

Despite operating the only pediatric ICU in the region, St. Vincent Healthcare has watched its patient load in that department steadily decline, Kallem said.

That's due in part to a shift in medicine that has forced most pediatricians to refer gravely ill children to specialists, and Montana has few pediatric specialists, Kallem said.

St. Vincent hopes to recruit a half-dozen or more of them to augment its new pediatric center, including a pediatric intensivist, pediatric surgeon and pediatric anesthesiologist.

Adding those physicians to the staff will help recruit others, Kallem said.

Construction on the pediatric emergency department is set to begin in the next couple of weeks. It is the only part of the overhaul that will not take place within the Joel T. Long Women's and Children's Pavilion, a 40,000-square-foot space on the hospital's fourth floor.

The pediatric ER will be adjacent to the hospital's existing emergency department and is slated to be operational in about two months. It will have beds for five patients and its own waiting area.

It makes sense to take kids out of the traditional ER because they need such different care than do adults, said Kallem, who worked for more than 10 years as a pediatric nurse.

"People think children are small adults. They are not," she said. "They are unpredictable."

The rest of the overhaul is expected to begin in November.

In the first phase, workers will gut the pediatric intensive care unit, a single room with four beds reminiscent of an old-style hospital ward. Four private ICU rooms will replace it.

When that's finished, the department's 17 acute care rooms will be remodeled, and four "step down" rooms will be built for babies who are well enough to leave the neonatal intensive care unit but not quite ready to be released from the hospital.

That will ease the load on the NICU, whose 22 beds are often full, Kallem said.

"It's very exciting," said Moran, the pediatric nurse. "To be able to put together a unit that will be safe and user-friendly for patients and their families and for nurses is awesome."

St. Vincent is relying on philanthropic donations to its foundation and a $2.5 million federal earmark from Sen. Conrad Burns, R-Mont., to foot the $12 million bill.

[Skyrise406]

By JAN FALSTAD of The Billings Gazette Staff
Published on Sunday, August 06, 2006


World-class sophistication that will earn a premier rating, yet retain a Montana flavor. An unpretentious contemporary design to replace the drab look of the Billings Sheraton Hotel. On Tuesday, The Hotel Group of Edmonds, Wash., paid an undisclosed amount for the Billings Sheraton Hotel. The deed change was recorded Thursday.

Now the company is launching a $10 million, 15-month renovation project.

In May, The Hotel Group founders Ed and Barb Lee made their first trip to Billings to check out the hotel.

"You can see it from the Rimrocks coming from the airport. So the first impression is it's the centerpiece of the community," Ed Lee said. "And then you get closer."

The all-brick exterior looked fortress-like, he said, but the hotel and city have "tremendous potential."

"It's a vibrant, fairly sophisticated community that is on its way back," Lee said. "So you combine those two factors and you have a good business opportunity."

Big hotel, big plans

Over the next six months, the owners will redecorate the 282 rooms. The balance of the projects, including redesigning the lobby, will take nine more months.

In addition to the sign changes, an architectural band or awning will be installed around the exterior second floor. Other planned improvements include:

• Turning the Lucky Diamond bar, with its million-dollar view of the Rimrocks, into conference space.
• Building a bar on the street level that will serve appetizers and light meals. A lobby bar will serve guests and attract other customers from downtown Billings.
• Re-evaluating the Lucky Diamond restaurant in terms of cuisine and location.
• Upgrading the ground floor Sheraton Club into a club for priority guests, including a pool table, darts and shuffleboard.
• Cleaning the inside and outside brick.
• Masking the utility substation between the hotel and the U.S. Post Office.
• Resealing and landscaping the parking lot along North 27h Street and Montana Avenue.
• Then there are the expensive, but less-noticeable changes: mechanical, electrical, plumbing and structural. Collectively, they're known as MEPS.

"We'll just say there are a few MEPS opportunities that we're looking into immediately," President Doug Dreher said.

Walking the plank?

With his back to Montana Avenue, Dreher stared up above the hotel entrance and wondered. On the second floor with no balcony in sight, two mysterious doors set into the brick open into thin air. "That's actually where we take the employee who has had a bad day," Dreher joked.

Bill Haynes of Collaborative Design Architects has been hired to load the old hotel plans into CAD computer software, so the designers can start refining their remodeling plans. Haynes, too, wondered about those doors and found the answer in some old blueprints.

"Somewhere in there it says, 'Knockout panel to accommodate future doors to parking garage addition,' " he said.

From dark to dashing?

Nobody on The Hotel Group team used the word "dowdy" to describe the current interior design. However, Seattle-based designer Andrea Dawson Sheehan, who owns Dawson Design Associates, said when she is done redecorating, the Sheraton will be warm, inviting and sophisticated, yet still have a Montana feel.

"Right now, when you walk in, it has the feel of an antique mall," she said. "A cave with a lot of shops."

Plans are preliminary at this stage, but Sheehan and Dreher plan to move some retail shops to the street level. Shopping, a gourmet coffee kiosk and a bar in the lobby that serves appetizers and light meals will help draw customers off the street, Dreher said.

All the Lewis and Clark paintings will be reframed and corralled into a better display.

The lobby's water wall will stay, but it will be cleaned up.

And the Petroleum Club on the 22nd floor will stay put, according to general manager Magnon King.

"The club looks forward to an exciting and prosperous relationship with them," King said.

Independent of the sale, the Petroleum Club is closing mid-August for its yearly maintenance. The private club will reopen Sept. 5.

The elevator buttons claim 23 floors, but the hotel actually has 22 because there is no 13th floor.

Sheehan's company also redesigned the Marriott along Lake Michigan in downtown Chicago. Dawson Design has won consecutive Lodging Hospitality Design Awards in 2005 and 2006.

A reinvigorated downtown was a draw for The Hotel Group. And Walkers Grill across North 27th Street drew the approving eyes of the company brass.

Vice President Lara Latture of Nashville, Tenn., called the mix of Western and contemporary design elegant and sophisticated.

"We want to be the Hotel Walker," Latture said. "It's incredible and the food's good, too." The ultimate goal is to make the Sheraton the premier hotel in Billings.

"We want something that feels like Montana with more of an urban edge," Sheehan said. "People flying in from Los Angeles are going to naturally choose this hotel because it feels familiar."

[RockMont]

I hope they don't remove or close up that 22nd or 23rd floor tavern and restaurant. I love that view from up there.

[Skyrise406]

Originally Posted by RockMont

I hope they don't remove or close up that 22nd or 23rd floor tavern and restaurant. I love that view from up there.

Bad News...they plan on turning the bar area into a conference room. Even though I do not drink beer, I enjoy having a soda and a burger (best burgers at 200 feet) there and the view!!

Good news...(I think) is that they will be re-evaluating the Lucky Diamond restaurant in terms of cuisine and location. Hope it stays put!!

Oh and the tavern & restaurant are on the 20th floor.

[Skyrise406]

Photo by LARRY MAYER/Billings Gazette Staff

[Skyrise406]

Hmmmm...I wonder if they are going to auction or sell those letters???

[Evo5Boise]

I haven't been to Billings in a few years. How is it doing? Still growing?

[Skyrise406]

Originally Posted by Evo5Boise

I haven't been to Billings in a few years. How is it doing? Still growing?

It is doing well...

(as of 2006)
Population (City): Around 100,000
Size: 41 Square Miles
Build High-rises: 5
Proposes High-rises: 2

Wow! Another connection to Billings (even if it's just a visit)!

[Skyrise406]

Work has begun to expand the Park 2 parking garage in Billings which currently has a total of six levels and around 500 spaces. The new Park 2 will be expanded vertically and horizontally to a toal of eight levels and around 900 parking spaces.

http://www.emporis.com/en/wm/bu/cs/?id=258066 - Constructions Status

http://www.downtownbillings.com/dbp/ParkII.html - Info and rendering

[Skyrise406]

The Billings City Council is to meet tonight on possibility of an urban renewal plan between Downtown Billings and the MetraPark Arena. Could highrises be in the future?!

CONTINUANCE OF PUBLIC HEARING AND FIRST READING ORDINANCE relating to the creation of the East Billings Urban Renewal Area; and adopting an urban renewal plan, including a tax increment provision. (Continued from 10/10/06). Staff recommends approval. (Action: approval or disapproval of Staff recommendation.)

[Cementglow]

So is the sandstone towers still on the drawing board? What went on with that?

[Comrade Reynolds]

I like buildings with signs on them. Do they plan on adding anything where the old SHERATON was?

[Skyrise406]

Originally Posted by Comrade Reynolds

I like buildings with signs on them. Do they plan on adding anything where the old SHERATON was?

It now says "Crowne Plaza"

[Skyrise406]

Originally Posted by Cementglow

So is the sandstone towers still on the drawing board? What went on with that?

Right now is has been terminated, but I'm hoping it will be proposed again.

[Skyrise406]

By DIANE COCHRAN Of The Billings Gazette Staff
Published on Friday, December 08, 2006


St. Vincent Healthcare is considering a $200 million construction project that would include a new trauma center and demolition of the historic Marillac Hall, the hospital's chief executive officer said on Thursday.

"Nothing is cast in stone," said James Paquette, who led the hospital for 12 years beginning in 1998 and returned as chief executive officer last week. "But there's been an enormous amount of work put into this."

The plan, which Paquette described as on the drawing board, would replace the hospital's existing emergency department and intensive-care unit and overhaul other patient areas.

It would also require relocating the physical plant. To make way for that move, Marillac Hall would be torn down.
The brick building sits adjacent to the main hospital building on North 30th Street. It opened in 1947 as a dormitory for nursing students and nuns and today houses administrative offices, including Paquette's.

A parking garage already under construction elsewhere on the hospital campus is also part of the plan.

Paquette said he asked the hospital's board of directors for three or four months to examine the remainder of the proposal before board members decide whether to move forward with it.

If the project gets a green light locally, blueprints will be sent to St. Vincent's parent group, the Sisters of Charity of Leavenworth in Kansas.

"This would be a recommendation from our local board here to our health system," Paquette said. "Final approval would come from them."

The Sisters of Charity of Leavenworth's 137-year presence in Billings bodes well for the proposal's fate, he said.

"They've made a significant investment in this community and will continue to do so," Paquette said.

Paquette, 59, officially took the helm of the Montana Region of the Sisters of Charity of Leavenworth Health System on Dec. 1. He oversees St. Vincent Healthcare in Billings, Holy Rosary Healthcare in Miles City and St. James Healthcare in Butte.

He replaced Michelle Hood, who left the position in March after five years to lead a hospital system in Maine.

Paquette was St. Vincent's chief operating officer from 1981 to 1988, when he became the chief executive officer. In 1996, his job description expanded to include oversight of the Miles City and Butte hospitals.

He left in 2000 to lead a three-hospital system in Kansas City also operated by the Sisters of Charity of Leavenworth.

One of his first tasks in Kansas City was to close one of those hospitals. It had been hemorrhaging money and was determined through a series of community meetings to be no longer viable.

"I really learned to appreciate the resources we had here in Montana," Paquette said.

He and his wife, Patte, are delighted to be back in Billings, where they raised their children, he said.

His familiarity with Billings and St. Vincent Healthcare softened the transition back into his former position, but Paquette said there is still a lot of catching up to do.

He said he wasn't familiar with the details of a plan by the hospital's neighboring medical center, Billings Clinic, to build a multimillion-dollar cancer center and withdraw from a 20-year partnership with St. Vincent that operates Northern Rockies Radiation Oncology Center.

The fate of the radiation treatment center remains unclear, but Paquette called St. Vincent's commitment to cancer care unwavering.

St. Vincent's own multimillion-dollar construction plans are not in response to Billings Clinic's, he said.

"Our motivational factors in doing this building project don't have anything to do with what Billings Clinic or anyone else has on their docket," he said.

He characterized the relationship between the hospitals as healthy.

"There are times we are going to compete, and that's good for the community, and there are times we'll be called upon to collaborate, and that's good, too," Paquette said. "There's plenty of patient volume and need to go around."

[Skyrise406]

By JAN FALSTAD Of The Billings Gazette Staff
Published on Wednesday, February 14, 2007.


Like tracks from a herd of elk, the rumors are hot and fresh and all over town.

Outdoors fans are jumping for joy at talk that the king of outdoor retail stores - Cabela's - may build on 84 acres at Zoo Drive and Shiloh Road.

However, reports that hammers will start flying along Zoo Drive by this summer are premature, Cabela's media specialist James Powell said from Sidney, Neb.

"We would like to build in Montana," Powell said. "But I wouldn't say that we've settled on a location."

A buy-sell agreement apparently exists - but hasn't been executed yet - on land north of Zoo Drive by Peggy Sue's Coffee kiosk.

Foursquare Properties Inc., of Carlsbad, Calif., reportedly is buying the property. The company, with 30 years in real estate development, has been eyeing Billings. The site is described as a 751,000-square-foot development called Shiloh Square.

Foursquare President Jeffrey Vitek said he had no comment on the Cabela's rumors.

A sign on the site also lists Coldwell Banker of Salt Lake City. Calls to that company were not immediately returned.

Steve Corning, who developed the Marketplace retail center at King Avenue West and South 24th Street West, among many other projects across Montana, said Cabela's is a prize tenant. However, he doesn't think any deal is firmed up.

"They do tourist meccas, which Bozeman is," Corning said. "I hope they pick Billings, but we may lose them to Bozeman because of the tourists."

Cabela's is stalking a Montana site, but the decision on where to build is a ways off, Powell said.

"Obviously, Montana would be a good market for us," he said. "If we can get a store in there, the sooner, the better."

City and county planners held a meeting with developers on Nov. 9 to discuss building requirements for the site, but no specific companies were named.

Cabela's Web site claims it is the "World's Foremost Outfitter," a phrase that is a registered trademark.

Many fans are quick to agree; shopping is just one pleasure this retailer offers.

The stores feature natural attractions, including running waterfalls and streams, trout ponds, giant freshwater aquariums stocked with native fish, trophy wild game posed in natural settings, gun libraries, indoor archery ranges and deli-restaurants featuring wild game, among other fare.

Cabela's runs 18 retail stores and is opening 12 more. Eight stores will open this year, with the other four to follow in 2008 or beyond, Powell said.

Last November, Cabela's announced plans to open a 125,000-square-foot retail store in Post Falls in northern Idaho by fall. Several months earlier, in August, Cabela's opened its first Idaho store in Boise. Montana and Wyoming have no current or planned stores.

In 1961, Dick Cabela started the family business by advertising fishing flies for sale in the Casper, Wyo., newspaper. Dick offered "a dozen hand-tied flies for $1," according to the company's Web site.

Cabela's now mails more than 120 million catalogs each year to customers in 50 states and 120 countries. In 2004, Cabela's went public and started trading on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol CAB. The stock closed at $24.01 on Tuesday.

[Skyrise406]

From KTVQ TV


A major retail developer is honing in on the city of Billings. The city's zoning commission has said yes to a development company, representing popular outdoor outfitter, Cabela's. The front company for the retail giant has been approved for a piece of property off of South Billings Boulevard.

On Tuesday night the Zoning Commission approved the request to re-zone 14 acres near Interstate 90 to "entryway commercial". The entire 44 acres of sugar beet land is owned by limited liability company Miller Trois in Billings.

Four Square Properties is the front company for Cabela's, and they would not comment on the move to Billings. Cabela's though, tells Q2 "Billings is a strong market of interest." The City Council will vote on the zone change request on May 29th.

[wrendog]

Nice! thanks for keeping us updated on an overlooked MW city...

[jimthemanincda]

What's new in Billings? Or Montana for that matter. I know there has to be something new between the cities of Billings, Bozeman, Kalispell and Missoula.