downtown Missoula

Work is underway to update several features at Caras Park in downtown Missoula.

A proposal envisioned in the Downtown Master Plan to bring recreational skating to Caras Park will get a closer look in the coming months to determine if the project is feasible.

I see the Missoula City Council has approved selling the so-called “Riverfront Triangle” property to the development group, Averill Hospitality. It would be nice to finally see something happen at the old Fox Theater site - vacant since the 1980s.

It’s amazing how much you can discover about a community from a single page of a local newspaper. For example, I offer up the “local” page of the July 3rd Missoulian from 1896.

Nick Caras has recently discovered “some old wallpapers in the Hammond Arcade, several of which are scenes of Chinese lanterns; and one of a traditional English ‘stag hunt.’ ” He wrote to the Missoula Current’s Martin Kidston, “I thought (I’d) ask if you had any hunch as far as date or perhaps you have some resources on the Chinese history in Missoula.” Martin passed the question to me, and I’m glad he did.

The city in 2023 received a $24 million federal grant to complete the Downtown Safety, Access and Mobility (SAM) project, and it's now aligning the pieces needed to begin work.

If you’ve been in Missoula for a very long time, you’ll may remember the store on North Higgins, next to Woolworth’s, before it went out of business in the 1950s. Back in 1912, the Barnhill brothers, Garnett and Hyatt, bought Joe Fitzgerald’s menswear store, closed briefly for remodeling, then opened “Barney’s” for business at 222 North Higgins on August 1 with “new stock.”