English Bulldog Puppies for Sale in Billings, MT

BILLINGS — St. Vincent Regional Hospital unveiled a nearly $1 billion construction plan to build a new facility that will open in 2029.

The 14-story facility will replace the current hospital and will be built on the current St. Vincent's campus, but it will be located to the east of the current building and closer to North 27th Street, in what is currently a parking lot.

Construction for the project will begin in the spring of 2025. Once it's completed, all current services from the old building will be transferred over.

St. Vincent Regional Hospital President Lee Boyles addressed a packed room at the Big Sky Economic Development with excitement Tuesday morning and later told MTN that the new building will take their care to another level.

"It's going to be second to none when it comes to quality, safe, and really technical care," Boyles said. "We'll be able to open up more beds, more rooms, and more operating rooms as we continue to grow as the community continues to grow."

Boyles said the new building will be 737,000 square feet and will be built with expansion and technological advancements in mind. But he was also excited about what the new facility could provide to the local economy.

"I'm super excited for what this means, not only for us and our healthcare delivery standpoint, but what it means economically for Billings," Boyles said.

Big Sky Economic Development Director Steve Arveschoug said it will add to an already booming industry in Yellowstone County. Arveschoug said that currently 20% of the jobs in the county are related to healthcare.

"We're seeing our role as the leader in healthcare grow," Arveschoug said. "We'll see more employment, more private investment that's going to drive our economy."

Arveschough said the five-year construction will also benefit the economy by bringing hundreds of workers — and their businesses — to Billings.

"This investment just takes this role and responsibility as a healthcare leader to another level," Arveschoug said. "(Construction employees) are not working 24/7. The rest of the time they're out spending money in our community, and they become a part of our community."

As of now, the project is expected to cost less than $1 billion, but a specific total cost wasn't provided Tuesday. There was a palpable excitement in the room — much to the thrill of longtime Montanan Boyles.

"To be a part of building a hospital just doesn't happen all the time," Boyles said with tears in his eyes. "Just the impact it'll have. My parents have come to St. V's ever since I was little, so yeah, it's big."

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BILLINGS – Moving boxes are piling up inside the home of Terry and Shanda Haney in Billings. But the boxes aren’t from when the family moved in, four months ago.

“We still have a lot of packing to do,” said Shanda.

The couple built their dream home in the up-and-coming Annafeld Subdivision in southwest Billings and finally moved in this summer.

“We’ve lived in a few places where we knew exactly what we wanted in a house, so we pulled the trigger on custom building,” said Terry.

A home to watch their young sons, ages 2 and 4, grow up.

“We got to enjoy it for four months,” he said.

In September, the Haney family’s world came crashing down, as Terry’s once stable and well-paying job at Sibanye Stillwater Mining ended.

“Very well paid, benefits are hard to beat,” he said.

He was one of hundreds of miners let go as a part of a massive wave of layoffs at the mine, and now the family is packing up their lives and moving across the country for work.

“We are leaving either Thursday or Friday,” said Shanda. “It’s a four-day trip.”

The Stillwater Mine in Nye struggled to compete with slumping precious metals prices, which prompted the cutbacks. Now Terry will take a new job with Oceana Gold in South Carolina, a similar move for many of the laid-off Montana miners.

“It’s scary and it's hard. We’ve never left family,” said Shanda.

Before August, the mine had about 1,675 employees and will keep roughly 1,000. One hundred five salaried employees are expected to be laid off, and 440 hourly. In addition, roughly 200 workers resigned from the mine since the company announced the layoffs this summer.

“We thought everything was looking... a lot more promising,” said Terry. “I think we were all kind of blindsided by the number of people that got let go.”

Terry worked in the bowels of the mine, underground, and he described the bond he shared with his fellow miners as a brotherhood.

“You build those brotherhood-like relationships with a lot of guys down there,” he said.

South Africa-owned Sibanye Stillwater is North America's largest producer of platinum and palladium at the main Stillwater Mine and its newer operation at the East Boulder mine in Big Timber.

Through the years, the mine has had its ups and downs as the metals market fluctuated.

“He’s faced a lot, and all those guys have faced a lot. And they work really hard for our families,” said Shanda.

The couple thought they’d be growing their young family in Montana but are now facing a new path. But with support from other mine families, they’re embracing this new chapter.

“Just in case, we don’t like the warm weather and miss the snow, we might come back,” said Terry. “But if everything is good, we will end up buying down there and selling our house next spring probably.”

The Haneys also say, they have the support of fellow Stillwater Mine families and say, many of them have also found jobs at other mines across the country in South Carolina, Nevada, and Alaska.

They also thanked the Montana Department of Labor and Industry and the agency's commissioner Sarah Swanson for help in navigating the job change.

Copyright 2024 Scripps Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

Intermountain Health St. Vincent Regional Hospital has unveiled the latest design plans for the new Intermountain St. Vincent Regional Hospital in Billings, Montana.

The new hospital will be a 14-floor, 737,000 square-foot facility located on the Intermountain St. Vincent campus at 27th Street & 12th Avenue North, just east of the current hospital building.

“As a leader in Montana healthcare, we are thrilled to break ground in 2025 on our brand-new hospital in Billings,” shared Lee Boyles, president of Intermountain St. Vincent Regional Hospital and the Montana and Wyoming market of Intermountain Health. “Building a replacement hospital affords a once-in-a-generation opportunity to take all we know about modern healthcare and design a hospital for high-quality, efficient care for decades to come.”

At the peak of construction, it's anticipated there will be 600-700 workers on site at the project, and more than 1,200 total workers involved in the building project.

Having this skilled workforce focused on this project in Billings will have a significant economic impact for the community.

From earlier projections of the size and scale of the project, it's expected that over the life of the project $13.5 million could be spent on accommodations and housing, and $6 million spent in grocery stores and restaurants alone, from the increase in the construction sector as well, among other large economic impacts in other sectors.

This will be a full-replacement hospital, meaning the current St. Vincent facility will be replaced, and upon opening, all current services offered at Intermountain St. Vincent will transfer to a new state-of-the-art facility.

The project is designed to address current needs of patients of the region, while accommodating both long-term population growth and future healthcare needs of the community. Construction on the project is expected to begin in Spring 2025 and anticipated to be completed in 2029.

Innovative design for patients and caregivers

The decision to replace the current facility was made to address aging infrastructure and to create a modern and efficient hospital. The guiding principles of the new hospital’s design will meet patient needs for many years to come.

The innovative and adaptable design ensures that the facility is built to meet how hospital care will continue to change. The new facility will have 243 patient beds with additional space ready to build out 16 additional beds when needed. All of the rooms are designed to be universal with the ability to be converted into an ICU level of care, allowing the hospital to respond to changing demands and a potential future pandemic.

Additionally, all of the operating rooms have been designed to adapt to multiple types of procedures and will be fully integrated to handle changes in technology and accommodate the latest and future developments in robotic surgical technology.

The surgical areas of the hospital have also been designed to have the pre-op, operating rooms, and recovery areas all in the same location, allowing for more efficient care.

To provide an excellent patient and caregiver experience, the new hospital will offer several unique design aspects:

“What excites me about this project is the ‘why’ behind it. We are doing this to elevate healthcare in our area for future generations of Montanans,” said Dustin Strandell, chief operating officer of Intermountain St. Vincent Regional Hospital. “The design you see today is the result of hundreds of meetings over the course of two years and includes insights and input from many of our talented providers, caregivers and experts.”

Intermountain Health leaders say the health system us excited to be making this investment on the current Intermountain St. Vincent campus in the heart of the existing medical corridor in Billings.

“We are confident the new hospital will serve as a catalyst for the continued growth and development of Billings as a leader in healthcare,” said Boyles. “We look forward to building a broad coalition of philanthropic, clinical, and community partners committed to transforming healthcare in our region.”

Serving the people of Montana, Wyoming, and the western Dakotas for more than 125 years, St. Vincent Regional Hospital is located in Billings, Montana. In addition to 12 Intermountain Health primary care clinics in and around the Billings area, St. Vincent offers dozens of progressive specialty services and a 286-bed hospital. St. Vincent even has a special “hospital within a hospital” just for children, St. Vincent Children’s. St. Vincent has more than 1,700 caregivers and over 500 physicians and advanced care professionals. St. Vincent is part of the Intermountain Health system. Headquartered in Utah with locations in six states (Montana, Colorado, Idaho, Nevada, Utah, and Wyoming) and additional operations across the western U.S., Intermountain Health is a nonprofit healthcare system comprised of 34 hospitals, approximately 400 clinics, medical groups with some 4,600 employed physicians and advanced practice providers. To help people live the healthiest lives possible, Intermountain is committed to improving community health and is widely recognized as a leader in transforming healthcare by using evidence-based best practices to deliver high-quality outcomes at sustainable costs consistently. To learn more about St. Vincent, visit svh.org.

Feds say out-of-stater moved in and expanded operation to distribute hundreds of pounds of meth, fentanyl

Twenty-seven people were convicted as part of a broad meth and fentanyl-trafficking ring based on the Crow Indian Reservation but tied to three other reservations in Montana, as well as Washington state and Mexico, Montana’s U.S. Attorney announced Thursday.

U.S. Attorney for the District of Montana Jesse Laslovich said the operation to target the drug-trafficking ring Spear Siding was one of the largest drug trafficking investigations in Montana in recent years. It started in June 2022 and ended in a raid in April 2023. Laslovich announced the convictions at a news conference in Billings on Thursday.

According to the U.S. Attorney’s Office and federal court documents, two homes on the Crow Reservation, one of them called Spear Siding, where some of the top dealers lived, were the center of the trafficking ring and dealt meth on the Crow and Northern Cheyenne reservations in southeastern Montana.

But the ring also expanded to Rocky Boy’s and the Fort Belknap reservations and into Billings and Havre. The conspirators would trade drugs for pounds of meth and guns at the Spear Siding property, and sent proceeds from the drug sales to Washington, California, and Mexico, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said.

“The Spear Siding trafficking organization moved onto the Crow and Northern Cheyenne Reservations to exploit and prey on persons addicted to meth and fentanyl, all due to greed. While meth and fentanyl distribution impacts all of Montana, these drugs continue to disproportionately devastate Indian Country,” Laslovich said in a statement. “As this Spear Siding investigation shows, Montana’s Indian reservations are not a safe haven for out-of-state traffickers who think they can move in, set up shop, and enlist local residents to peddle drugs.”

Twenty-seven people pleaded guilty to drug trafficking, firearms crimes, or both, his office said. Two alleged co-conspirators are still on the run, including one of the top-level people behind the operation.

Wendell Lefthand and his sister Frederica Lefthand, who both lived at the Spear Siding home, each had a hand in running the operation. Wendell Lefthand initially was running the operation along with one of the now-fugitives, whom he met through a meth distributor in Washington. That unnamed co-conspirator moved to the Spear Siding home, after which “business started booming,” according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.

Wendell Lefthand was arrested in June 2022 on a different charge, and his sister took over the Montana operation, dealing “pounds and pounds and pounds” of meth, according to court documents.

She and the co-conspirator allegedly built an operation that sent hundreds of pounds of meth to the Crow and Northern Cheyenne reservations to be distributed to lower-level dealers.

The Drug Enforcement Administration, Federal Bureau of Investigation, and Bureau of Indian Affairs conducted and assisted with the investigation.

“Cartel members preyed on an already vulnerable population, further fueling the drug crisis on Montana’s Indian Reservations, and employing members of the community to peddle poison to their own people,” Salt Lake City FBI Special Agent in Charge Shohini Sinha said in a statement. “Too many lives have been lost to illicit drugs. Too many families have suffered. The FBI and our partners will not stop pursuing criminals harming our communities.”

The 27 people convicted received the following sentences, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office:

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The 2024 Montana high school football playoffs kick off this week as all five classifications will feature partial - of full - tournament action.

In the largest Class AA classification, the top four seeds - Gallatin, Glacier, Capital and Billings West - all have first-round byes.

Also in Class A, the top four seeds - Frenchtown, Laurel, Billings Central Catholic and Beaverhead County - are automatically through to the quarterfinals.

>>Montana high school football playoff brackets<<

Stick with High School on SI for all of the matchups, game times and scores throughout the 2024 IHSAA football playoffs.

2024 Montana high school football playoffs brackets

Here are the Montana high school football playoff brackets, with matchups and game times from every MHSA classification:

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Class AA

Helena vs. Russell

6 p.m. Friday

Great Falls vs. Butte

6 p.m. Friday

Bozeman vs. Sentinel

6 p.m. Friday

Big Sky vs. Billings Senior

6 p.m. Friday

2024 MHSA Class AA football bracket

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Class A

Havre vs. East Helena

6 p.m. Frday

Columbia Falls vs. Corvallis

6 p.m. Friday

Whitefish vs. Bigfork

6 p.m. Friday

Fergus vs. Custer County

6 p.m. Friday

2024 MHSA Class A football bracket

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Class B

Red Lodge/Roberts vs. Broadwater

Noon Saturday

Loyala/Sacred Heart vs. Conrad

Noon Saturday

Manhattan vs. Baker

Noon Saturday

Glasgow/Hinsdale/Nashua vs. Lincoln County

Noon Saturday

Malta/Whitewater/Saco vs. Thompson Falls

Noon Saturday

Huntley Project vs. Three Forks

Noon Saturday

Florence/Carlton vs. Fairfield

Noon Saturday

Jefferson vs. Joliet

Noon Saturday

2024 MHSA Class B football bracket

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* 2024 MHSA 8-man football bracket: Belt, Valley Christian, Fairview, Manhattan Christian are No. 1 seeds.

* 2024 MHSA 6-man football bracket: Bridger, Lincoln, Centerville, Box Elder, Bainville are top seeds.

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