South Billings' New Rec Complex Exists Because a Bigger Plan Failed First

Drive the corner of King Avenue East and South Billings Boulevard this month and you'll pass two buildings that did not exist a year ago, both still smelling like fresh paint, both packed most evenings. One has ice inside it. The other has hardwood. Neither one was supposed to happen this way.

In July 2026, within four days of each other, the Signal Peak Energy Arena and the Amend Recreation Center opened to the public at Amend Park. A new junior hockey team is moving in behind them. A restaurant overlooking the ice is opening this month. For a stretch of the South Side that spent years being described, even by the people who represent it, as the other side of the tracks, that is a lot of ribbon-cutting packed into one summer.

The interesting part is not that it happened. It's why it happened now, and not three years earlier when Billings voters had the chance to fund something similar and said no.

Four Openings, One Summer

The timeline is tight enough that longtime South Side residents have been tracking it like a construction countdown:

• July 17-19, 2026 — The Signal Peak Energy Arena opened for its first weekend of public skating, youth and adult hockey, figure skating and curling. The $16 million facility, built entirely with private funds, gives Billings two full ice sheets for the first time: a 1,200-seat Marquee Rink and a secondary sheet known as the Larson Arena.
• July 21, 2026 — The Amend Recreation Center opened two days later, its nearly 48,000 square feet of continuous hard flooring built for basketball, volleyball and pickleball. This one ran on roughly $20 million in public funds.
• September 2026 — Archie's Alehouse, a restaurant and bar tucked into a skybox space overlooking the main rink, is set to open in time for junior hockey season.
• October 2026 — The Billings Cattle Punchers, Montana's newest junior hockey team and the arena's new home tenant in the North American Hockey League, play their first home game after five road games to open the season.

That is not a coincidence of construction schedules. It is the direct result of a bond measure that failed three years earlier.

The Bond That Had to Fail First

In 2023, Billings voters rejected a $143 million bond that would have funded a multi-sport facility, a new ice arena and upgrades to city parks in one combined package. It lost decisively.

Dick Zier, the longtime consultant for the South Billings Urban Renewal Association, put the timing plainly in an interview before construction began: the vote landed right after residents had opened their new property tax bills.

"The timing was kind of bad. Everybody had just got their new tax bill."

What happened next is the part most residents driving past Amend Park today don't know. After the bond failed, city leaders agreed to restart the conversation, but only under three conditions: no bond, no levy, and the project had to run as a public-private partnership. Those rules are what brought Signal Peak Energy, a coal mining company based in Roundup, to the table as the arena's lead donor, and what split the project into two smaller, faster-moving pieces instead of one large public vote.

The result reached the finish line inside three years instead of stalling in a second referendum fight. Dick Zier did not live to see the ribbon cut. His daughter, Brittani Hoiness, spoke at the Amend Recreation Center's opening ceremony and paid tribute to her father, who had advocated for the project for years before his death. Billings Mayor Mike Nelson told the crowd that night the opening was about more than a building: it was about what the city chooses to invest in.

The lesson for anyone watching how public projects get built in Yellowstone County is that the failed vote wasn't the end of the story. It forced a leaner structure that ended up moving faster than the original all-in-one plan ever could have.

What "The Other Side of the Tracks" Sounds Like Now

State Sen. Mike Yakawich, who represents south Billings, has watched the reputation shift happen in real time. "The development is happening. I think people are energized," he said this summer, adding that he thinks the South Side is becoming a place people picture when they think about raising a family.

Bill Kennedy, treasurer of the South Side Task Force and a Billings City Council member, said it more directly: "The South Side of Billings is not the place on the other side of the tracks. I think it's come a long way in the last five years."

That five-year clock matters. The South Billings Urban Renewal Association has been running its tax increment financing district quietly for years, funding sidewalks, street improvements and other infrastructure long before the arena or the rec center broke ground. The new buildings are visible. The groundwork that made them possible wasn't.

The Food Finally Caught Up

New destinations tend to expose gaps in what's already around them, and the South Side's food and coffee scene has been filling in fast to meet it.

Maple Moose Coffee and Pop Shop, already established at its original Annafeld location, opened a second South Side spot last fall by taking over Rail Line Coffee at 104 South 29th Street. Owner Carla Brownson brought the shop's signature coffee, pop and Wilcoxson's Ice Cream to the space, giving the block a gathering spot that wasn't there before.

A few minutes away on State Street, El Buen Sazón opened earlier this year with bright colors, a lively dining room and a menu built entirely from scratch. Yvette Nava Hernandez, who helps run the kitchen, put it simply when asked what makes the food stand out: "Everything is from scratch. We buy the food, we prepare it, nothing pre-made." Customers have told the family the smell alone stops them on the sidewalk.

Nearby, Lava Island, a business that opened on the South Side last year, has watched the new foot traffic arrive alongside the arena and rec center. Hotel operators are feeling it too. Cathy Cullen-Kuhr, director of sales for the Hampton Inn on Southgate Drive, said she expects hockey tournaments and rec league events to push occupancy up not just at her hotel but across the corridor.

The Park That Was Already Here

For all the new construction, the South Side's oldest gathering place hasn't moved. South Park, a 16-acre green space dedicated in 1913, has served South Side families for more than a century, long before anyone drew up plans for an ice arena two blocks away.

Every July, the park anchors the Billings Mexican Fiesta, first held in 1953 and now in its 72nd year. The 2026 fiesta drew more than 10,000 visitors on July 18, with families taking advantage of the park's free splash pad and playground between sets of live music and folklórico dance. It remains the longest-running cultural event in the city, and it's a reminder that the South Side's identity was never waiting on a new building to prove it. The new arena and rec center are additions to something that was already working, not a rescue of something that wasn't.

What This Adds Up To

The South Side didn't get lucky with timing this summer. It got a failed bond in 2023 that forced a smaller, faster structure, a private donor willing to build half the project outright, and a neighborhood that had already spent years investing in its own infrastructure quietly enough that most people never noticed until the ribbon-cuttings started stacking up. The ice arena, the rec center, the coffee shop on South 29th and the restaurant on State Street are all downstream of that one rejected vote. Understanding that sequence is the difference between watching a neighborhood change and understanding why it did.

If you're curious what all of this means for property values and demand on the South Side, or you just want a second set of eyes on what a home here is worth today, the team at Live. Laugh. Montana. knows this stretch of Yellowstone County block by block. Get your instant home valuation and schedule a consultation whenever you're ready to talk.