You have probably noticed the new places. Cupbop opened on King Avenue West in late January with Korean barbecue bowls and a soft opening line that surprised even its owner. Captain Scurvy's Black Dragon Den, a medieval-themed restaurant on Minnesota Avenue, has been drawing curious regulars since May. Doc Harper's cut a door in its north wall last September and opened The Waiting Room, a prohibition-themed speakeasy, next to the longtime cocktail lounge. Downtown added 25 new businesses in 2025, up from 21 in 2024, with only 8 closures.
Billings residents have seen versions of this before. A wave of openings, local enthusiasm, a few closures, a return to baseline. The cycle is familiar enough that "downtown is coming back" has become a running joke in some circles.
What's different in 2026 is not the restaurants. It's what's going up behind them.
The Missing Ingredient Downtown Has Never Had
Every city that has sustained a walkable downtown core did it the same way: people live there. Not visiting, not commuting in for lunch, not parking for a show. Living there, walking to dinner three nights a week, grabbing coffee before work, becoming the regular customer base that makes a restaurant's Tuesday night viable.
Downtown Billings has always had the businesses. It has rarely had the residents.
That is what four simultaneous construction projects are now trying to fix, all breaking ground or advancing through permitting in 2026. The Billings Gazette reported in January 2026 that the AC Marriott Hotel, the Old Billings Hardware Building, the Masonic Temple, and the Futurity Tower are all progressing this year. The scale and simultaneity of that list is worth slowing down for.
The Tower
The most consequential of the four is the Futurity Tower, planned for the corner of North 29th Street and First Avenue North, on the former Yesteryears Antique Mall site. High Plains Architects describes it as a 12-story, 140-foot mixed-use building with two floors of retail, restaurant, and office space topped by 10 floors of one- and two-bedroom apartments, 120 units total. When completed, it will be the first new high-rise built in Montana since 1984.
Developer Randy Hafer has said publicly that the target tenant is not a luxury renter. His language in the Billings Gazette was specific: nurses, teachers, bank tellers. Working people who can walk from an apartment to a job at Billings Clinic or downtown and then walk home through the brewery district on a Friday night. He designed the building so residents will not pay utility bills, citing an energy-generating exterior skin and an unusually efficient mechanical system, and is pursuing LEED Platinum certification.
That detail about the rents matters more than it might seem. The businesses that have struggled downtown are not the ones that get written up. They are the ones that run out of Tuesday customers. A tower of 120 workforce-income residents, walking-distance from the restaurant corridor, would represent something downtown Billings has not had: a stable, year-round spending base that does not depend on weekend foot traffic.
The Hotel, the Hardware Store, the Masonic Temple
The AC Marriott Hotel is going up at the corner of North 27th Street and Second Avenue North, where the Rockman Building stood. The project is developer Bill Honaker's most recent downtown investment. The current plan puts completion at the end of 2026, though Honaker has acknowledged that timeline could shift on a project of this size. The hotel adds a different kind of resident: overnight visitors, conference attendees, travelers who arrive with money to spend and no car to drive to the West End.
The Old Billings Hardware Building at 2802 Montana Avenue has sat largely empty for close to 30 years. The Billings Gazette reported it is slated to begin construction this spring, converting the basement and first floor to retail and restaurant space and the upper floors to residential apartments. The project received Tax Increment Financing approval from the Billings City Council, which means the city concluded the building was unlikely to be redeveloped without that push.
The Masonic Temple redevelopment is the least defined of the four projects. Environmental studies and design work are underway, per the January 2026 Gazette report. Details are thin enough that it belongs on a watch list rather than a calendar.
What This Means for the Places Worth Visiting Now
The case for the construction matters because of what it means for the places already open. The Downtown Billings Association reported in early 2025 that nearly five of the year's new openings came through its "Battle of the Plans" entrepreneurship program, and that vacant storefronts typically refill within three to six months. That turnover speed signals that the barrier to opening downtown is low. The barrier to staying open is the one that matters.
A few of the 2025 and early 2026 openings are worth knowing by name.
Earthbound Café at 207 North Broadway is a breakfast and lunch spot co-owned by Joshua Ploeg, Jessica Johnson, and Nicholas Rogers, built around a rotating menu that accommodates vegan, vegetarian, and gluten-free diets without making it the whole identity. It opened early 2025 and drew steady traffic in its first two weeks. Ploeg's stated goal was eclectic cuisine that doesn't reinvent anything, just serves all of it.
Tup Tim Thai at 2916 First Avenue North brought Northern Thailand cooking downtown, filling a gap that was genuine. The cuisine category had been missing from the walkable downtown core.
On King Avenue West, Cupbop opened its grand doors January 29 at 2564 King Ave W with build-your-own Korean barbecue bowls. Owner Bryan Layton, who previously ran multiple Great Harvest Bread locations for over 20 years, holds the territory from Billings to Fort Collins and plans to expand into Wyoming next. Cheba Hut, a toasted-sub chain opening its first Montana location at 824 Shiloh Crossing Boulevard, was targeting late February. The Shiloh Crossing corridor is getting its own version of the same story.
In the Heights, the Martinez family, who own Burritos Don Chuy at 1414 Main Street, opened Heart Beat Coffee and Ice Cream next door during summer 2025. The shop sells paletas and authentic Mexican street food made locally. The Martinez family also owns Michoacan A Pedir De Boca in Bozeman. The Heights has been short on sit-down and specialty food options for years; two family-owned spots at the same address is a start.
The Billings ReFill Shoppe reopened at 2713 First Avenue North after owner Katie Harrison closed her original Montana Avenue location in 2023. The shop sells local sustainable goods and refillable products, and Harrison has described the response in her first weeks as unexpectedly warm.
The Part Most Coverage Misses
When Wingstop announced locations in Billings, Bozeman, and Missoula for 2026, the news got the same local-interest treatment as Cupbop and Cheba Hut. Chain arrivals are a data point about market confidence, not a story about the neighborhood. The more interesting signal is that independent operators are choosing downtown at the same moment the construction pipeline is finally addressing the residential gap.
Big Sky Economic Development, which has a financial stake in the Futurity Tower project, conducted a housing study and found that Billings needs a minimum of a thousand new homes in the downtown corridor to support the medical investments already underway, including a new St. Vincent hospital and Billings Clinic's Level 1 Trauma Center expansion. The Futurity Tower's 120 units get that started. They do not finish it.
The businesses opening now are betting on what that study describes. Whether the construction delivers on schedule will determine whether the bet pays.
If you own a home in Billings and want to understand what this activity means for your specific block, your neighborhood, or the value of what you own, Heidi Brosovich has been watching this market closely. Request a free home valuation and get a clear picture of where things stand right now.
