Inside of Billings, Montana

I was in Billings for a meeting of people who manage downtown cores. Its always interesting to see the different scales of "downtowns." As you can imagine Billings has a fairly small downtown. Interestingly they created a plan for keeping it going, you know focusing on the historic architecture - lots of small older hotels being re-purposed into antique shops, restaurants and bars. But the streets were HUGE - must have been 75 feet across. Parking on both sides (also enormous parking decks everywhere) and many in the downtown were one-way pairs. I almost stopped in the middle of the street and took a picture just to show how huge-ly wide they were. Built for the entire state of Montana (under a million) to drive through each in their own huge truck and you still probably wouldn't fill those roads.

It has a lot of the same terrible inflictions as other big sprawling Midwestern towns and railroad towns I've been in. The scale is completely blown by about two or three high-rise (really mid-rise) 70s and 80's buildings. In this case it was a bank and a conference hotel. In that same area there was a beautifully restored full block six or seven story brick building probably built in the 20s. Which may have had slightly less SF than the "towers" but were so much better for the town. Interesting juxtaposition; plus the building had a fabulous restaurant - I thought for a moment I was in San Francisco. Guess there are a lot of rich folk who own ranches in Montana and they have to go out to eat somewhere.

Anyway the other interesting thing about Billings was this white sail-like thing which covers their 100% intersection. Looks like it was designed in the 1990's for the inside of a mall. But it defines that area of town and they have Friday night music under it, a farmers market under it on Saturday mornings. Obviously with the size of their streets, re routing traffic is not really an issue so closing down that intersection doesn't affect traffic flow. Interesting idea to create "place." Don't know that I would suggest it for anywhere else but they seem to be fond of it. Apparently, the wings on the thing contract in the winter and the site of the guys moving it is really something to see.

One other thing about this 100% corner is another older building undergoing condo conversion. Selling price are about $185 per square foot. Hard to imagine you could restore and construct for that but then again I'm looking at 500-1000 Great British Pounds sales price in London these days so everything in the US - especially Montana seems cheap to me.