Helena’s 2026 Projects
A look at the construction and development projects that have been applied for this year.
When people ask me how the market is, I think about how many projects this year finally went. Land we have all driven past for years, wondering why nobody ever built on it. Projects we knew were out there, waiting on someone with the gumption to take them on. This article names them by property type: the ones that went, and the ones lining up behind them. Not all of these will make it to a final building permit, fewer will get built, fewer still will be a home run success, but investors and businesses are taking a run at Helena, and that says more about this market than any number I could put in front of you. The projects below were formally applied for this year, projects still in the pre-application phase were not included.
SUBDIVISIONS
Crystal Springs Village (McHugh Lane and Benton) is the most consequential filing of the year. Twenty-two multi-family residential lots plus sixteen commercial lots across two roughly twenty-acre parcels, one inside city limits and one outside. It is a triple filing: preliminary plat, pre-zone, and annexation by petition, all submitted in mid-February and all still in review nearly six months later. Nothing has reached a board agenda yet.
Commercial Phase 7 within Mountain View Meadows has a final plat in review. This plat will provide new commercial lots for sale within Mountain View Meadows.
MULTIFAMILY
Aero Vistas (611 Stratos Street) The submittal covers Road Runner Street, Cooney Drive, stormwater planning for all phases, and water and sewer extensions. It is proposed to build 240 multifamily units on this parcel.
317 North Cruse Avenue is a proposed four-story, forty-seven-unit apartment building over a ground-level parking garage on a sloping site. It was filed the first week of January and is still in review, making it the longest-pending application on the books this year.
The Ironfront (413 North Last Chance Gulch) converts roughly 33,000 square feet downtown. Phase I turns the second and third floors into apartments and the fourth floor plus mezzanine into condos, adds an egress staircase, and sprinkles the entire building. This one is finalized.
Burnham Ranch Phase I (2356 Shorthorn Avenue) is a proposed apartment project inside the subdivision, in review since early May. A companion amended plat aggregating the lots is moving alongside it. The project aims to build 150 multifamily units.
RETAIL
The former Shopko is the busiest retail address in town. The building is being carved from a single 132,000-square-foot box into six leasable spaces, with a full re-roof, new facade, tenant separation walls, and new mechanical, electrical, and fire systems. Two buildouts are pending inside it: Dunham’s Sports, a national retailer with roughly 250 stores, is taking about 62,000 square feet, and Boot Barn is taking a unit.
The former Big Lots is being split into two spaces. AutoZone is taking one unit. The other is going to a furniture design center and showroom, applied for at the end of July and still in review.
Barnes & Noble is coming to Skyway Regional Shopping Center, with an interior tenant fit-up filed this spring.
McDonald’s is demolishing and replacing the former Hardee’s with ground-up new construction, permitted and underway.
Club Pilates has leased the last unit in the spec space next to Staples, joining Jersey Mike’s and Cupbop. Its buildout is complete and occupied.
OFFICE & MEDICAL
Stockman Bank (1000 North Last Chance Gulch) is the largest private project applied for this year. A five-story commercial building and a three-story parking structure, with rooftop terraces on the fourth and fifth floors and a drive-in bank. Reporting puts it at about 50,000 square feet of bank space and a sixty-seven-space parking deck, targeting completion by winter 2028. The muffler shop on the site has already come down. Permit and site plan are both in review.
Mountain View Eyecare (3267 Colonial Drive) is a new single-story optometry and ophthalmology clinic of roughly 16,000 square feet, applied for in mid-July and in review.
The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs has a new dental clinic proposed at 2875 Lindbergh Way. Both the permit and the site plan are still pending.
PUBLIC PROJECTS
The Helena school bond is the biggest construction story in the county. The new Helena High School and the relocated Project for Alternative Learning at 1300 Billings Avenue total roughly 275,000 square feet, with a foundation permit filed in June and the site plan moving in parallel. Capital High School has a separate permit issued for demolition, early work, and temporary classrooms ahead of a 212,000-square-foot renovation of its ground level. The district’s replacement central kitchen on Boulder Avenue, roughly 14,000 square feet, is permitted and will produce meals for every school in the system. An alley vacation and boundary relocation near the Helena High campus is also in review.
The City of Helena Public Works maintenance shop and pipe storage warehouse is a 7,200-square-foot pre-engineered metal building, sixty feet by one hundred twenty. The north half is insulated and heated for the shop; the south half is unheated pipe storage. A partial mezzanine holds an office, break room, locker room, and bathroom. Applied for in February and still in review.
ARE YOU READY TO WORK TOGETHER?