Ciao Mambo has good to great Italian food on South Higgins in Missoula and here in Billings in the Montana Avenue Historic District. Great to here that your Sicilian friend also loved it, CDA !!!
If you come to Billings in the next one to three years, be prepared for a lot of construction !!! Intermountain Health just announced they're building a brand-new 14 story, 750,000 square foot hospital right on North 27th, the road connecting the new airport on the rims to downtown, just two blocks east of their old hospital campus, part of which will be torn down, part coverted into apartments, and part probably sold to nearby MSU-Billings. The price tag for Montana's newest hospital $ 1 billion. While Billings Clinic will remain Montana's biggest hospital, with about 350 beds, St. V's will push 300 when they're new digs are finished in 2029. And first BC and now St. V's are both Level 1 trauma centers, the only Level 1's in Montana, SD, Wyo., and even Idaho with Boise--our 3 neighbors have 0, and Level 1's do save lives !!!
Further down south on N. 27th, a swanky new seven story Marriott Hotel will be built next to Old City Hall, complete with rooftop restaurant and bar. Turning left at the intersection of North 27th where the 23 story Doubletree stands and west three blocks, ground will be broken on Futurity Tower, a 12 story apartment building with two floors of retail and restaurants and 10 floors of apartments. BC and St. V's alone can probably fill up the Futurity's apartments. BC alone has 4,700 employees, 500 of whom are doctors.
Five miles west, construction has already started on Rocky Buena University's Montana College of Veterinary Medicine whose campus will be adjacent to The Montana College of Osteopathic Medicine, Montana's first and only medical school, which welcomed its first class of med students last fall. More apartments and town homes are being built for the school's staffs and students all around these new schools.
And back downtown at the intersection of 6th Ave. North and North 27th, there are several acres ready for one new big skyscraper or several smaller buildings where US Bank drive through and the Downtown Burger King were located. Stay tuned.
We are reeling from the partial shutdown of Sibanye Stillwater Mine, the hemisphere's only platinum and palladium mine due to low palladium prices in Colombus, Nye and Big Timber in the Beartooth Mountains, and the loss of 500 good-paying jobs, but the expansions at the two big hospitals combined with Billings status as Montana's medical, business, and energy capital, will soon more than make up for Stillwater Mine, which will hopefully hire back at least some of the miners once palladium prices hopefully recover.at least somewhat.
As Montana's biggest city, Billings has currently about 123,000 people, and we are fixin' to get quite a bit bigger but new construction and it's resulting headaches is the price for all of this growth !!!
