A part of downtown Billings on North 29th Street is called Retail Row, and a lot of the vacancies have recently been filled with new businesses coming to downtown.
Tiffany Miller O'brien owns the Frae Everyday Goods store located in Shiloh Crossing.
“Our kind of big mission is to bring back the neighborhood corner store, but with local and sustainable goods,” Miller O’brien said.
“And while this is a local business selling products, if you buy a soap from a kiddo's mom, you feel like you're contributing to that family,” Miller O’brien said.
Frae is now ready to expand to a second neighborhood and location: downtown.
“We're excited to be a part of all of the kind of vibrant things that they offer downtown,” said Miller O’brien.
She will get some financial help to do that after winning a business pitch competition known as the Battle Of The Plans.
The Downtown Billings Association started the program in 2016 after watching several businesses depart for the West End.
“In 2024, we were ready to bring that program back to continue our mission to tackle the existing vacancies at the ground level,” said Mehmet Casey, Downtown Billings Association development director.
Casey says there were 85 ground-level vacancies in 2019.
Now there are 28 with three businesses ready to remodel and possibly three others from the Battle Of The Plans ready to come downtown.
“Today's vacancies are slightly on the larger scale, larger square footage,” Casey said. “Sometimes, maybe the spaces are a little bit more raw so they need to be renovated or restored or rehabbed.”
Casey points to a successful business that recently moved downtown from Grand Avenue and merged with the Bozeman Store, Music Villa.
“That's another nice edition of a unique feature of retail, specialized retail, something that we didn't have in the downtown area," he said.
“A vibrant community downtown means lots of successful businesses and, you know, a little friendly competition is great too,” Miller O’brien said.
It’s a success story in the making and a constant work in progress.
“We have a very nice, healthy community downtown,” Casey said. “Collaborative in nature. Everyone wants to see everyone else succeed.”
