New buildings under construction in the shadow of Lone Mountain
By Tyler Allen EBS Senior Editor
BIG SKY – If you’re reading this on your annual ski trip to Big Sky Resort, or haven’t driven south from Bozeman in a few months, you may be surprised by the changing landscape of Big Sky Town Center.
In addition to the townhouses and condos springing up east of Ousel Falls Road, commercial construction in Town Center is populating the vertical skyline of this resort hamlet.
Lone Mountain Land Company is nearing completion on the 19,000-square-foot building at 47 Town Center, and its butterfly-roofed neighboring structure at the corner of Lone Mountain Trail and Ousel Falls Road is set for completion in early summer 2017. LMLC was formed in 2014 by CrossHarbor Capital Partners specifically for CrossHarbor’s development of Spanish Peaks Mountain Club and Moonlight Basin—CrossHarbor is also the principal owner of the Yellowstone Club.
Rotherham Construction is adding an addition to the Peaks Building, which is home to Beehive Basin Brewery, and should be finished in March. When the building is completed, the brewery will have additional basement storage and bathrooms, and two commercial spaces will open with businesses yet to be determined.
Big Sky’s The Lotus Pad will be one business finding a new home at 47 Town Center. The Asian restaurant is moving from its Westfork Plaza location into the larger space and is slated to open by Martin Luther King Jr. Day on Jan. 16, according to Bayard Dominick, LMLC’s vice president of planning and development.
The 10,000 feet of commercial space will also host The Tea & Spice Exchange, a national chain that also has a Bozeman location. Bozeman-based SAV Digital Environments will have a showroom and retail space, and two other restaurants have signed letters of intent as of EBS press time on Dec. 7, but Dominick wouldn’t identify those businesses since these letters only indicate a preliminary business agreement.
On the second and third floors are 16 residential apartments, including 14 two-bedroom units and two one-bedroom units. The two-bedroom apartments are listed for rent between $1,900 and $2,150 per month and 10 of the rentals were leased within the first 10 days they were offered.
Once construction is complete on the 38,000-square-foot 25 Town Center Ave building, the second floor will be headquarters to Lone Mountain Land Company and The Big Sky Real Estate Co., the luxury real estate company that LMLC formed earlier this year.
The ground floor will have an “experience center,” to learn about Town Center and the Big Sky area, Dominick said, as well as a café run by Bozeman-based Sola Café and Montana-themed outdoor retail store.
“We’re hoping that with the completion of the Town Center [buildings], ‘Main Street’ will really come together,” Dominick said. “It will start building that critical mass of people living there, shopping, [going to] restaurants that will really make Town Center a destination.”
