Progress made toward retail plaza in Butte

A crucial feature to a proposed plaza with 11 national stores and restaurants in Butte is in place now that county and state officials have agreed on installing a traffic light to the entrance of the area off Harrison Avenue.

“It became a critical element to this — that without that light, many of the businesses that were intending to come here might have pulled out because of the inability to get traffic into that development,” J.P. Gallagher, Butte-Silver Bow’s chief executive, told The Montana Standard.  

Developer Dave Leon agreed on the significance of the traffic light and says he’s getting close to nailing down all leases and announcing the big-name retailers and restaurants coming to Butte.

“We have 11 leases and we’ve got nine of them, you know, that are on the one-yard line,” he told The Standard on Monday. “Some of them have been executed. What I want to do is wait until we get them all executed (before announcing), which shouldn’t take much longer.”

People are also reading…

Leon is CEO of New York-based PF Management Group and the owner and operator of all Planet Fitness centers in Montana, Wyoming, North Dakota and Latin America.

He said in October that Planet Fitness will be one of the businesses in a “synergy” plaza and the others will also be national stores and restaurants found in Helena and Bozeman but not Butte. It will be the biggest influx of retail in Butte in decades, he said.

He noted Monday that major dirt work continues at the site just northwest of Bert Mooney Airport and said the tab for that alone has reached $3 million.

“I don’t know if there is another site like this, let alone in the state of Montana but in states nearby, where you’ve got so many of the top national tenants all together in one plaza,” he said. “That creates a synergy.”

Leon said Butte-Silver Bow County and its economic development officials have helped the project move along, and that includes their work with the Montana Department of Transportation in getting the traffic light approved.

Harrison Avenue is among many major streets in Butte overseen by MDT and Gallagher says the agency’s initial choice for a traffic light was not the specific entrance to the planned plaza. Now it will be at the entrance.

“For many of the leases or the property owners that are going into this site, that was critical,” Gallagher said. “We have an agreement with MDT, Butte-Silver Bow and the developer where that light is going to go, so we think we’ve cleared that hurdle.”

The 17-acre development site is located between two auto dealerships on the east side of Harrison Avenue on the south end of Butte. The light will go at Enterprise Way, a short little street off southbound Harrison that runs between Jim Fisher’s auto dealership and Enterprise Rent-a-Car.

Motorists traveling north on Harrison would simply take a right at the light into the plaza. Drivers heading south on Harrison would get a left-turn signal at the light to gain access to the plaza.

Enterprise Way is not a through-street going west — it dead-ends after about 100 yards — and it will only lead into the planned plaza going east.

“But you can turn from the southbound lane into the development,” Gallagher said. “It was crucial they get southbound traffic turned into the development.”

Gallagher said MDT officials were great to work with, and he believes Leon is “very motivated” to seeing the plaza become reality. He also acknowledged that some folks in Butte are skeptical about it materializing.

“That’s because we’ve had developments that said they were coming in that didn’t,” Gallagher said. “But I think all you have to see is the work that’s going on down there. There’s about a $3 million investment just in the dirt work already invested there. I believe that this is going to come to fruition.”

Montana-based Langlas and Associates is the general contractor and its banners cover chain-link fencing next to the site. It has district offices in Billings, Bozeman, Butte and Missoula, and Leon says it will handle about 70% of construction for the project.

Mike Smith is a reporter at the Montana Standard with an emphasis on government and politics.

0 Comments '); var s = document.createElement('script'); s.setAttribute('src', '); document.body.appendChild(s); window.removeEventListener('scroll', throttledRevContent); __tnt.log('Load Rev Content'); } } }, 100); window.addEventListener('scroll', throttledRevContent); }, false);

The business news you need

Get the latest local business news delivered FREE to your inbox weekly.