HELENA — Over the last year and a half, you’ve probably seen a major construction project along Last Chance Gulch in downtown Helena. Now, the Seeley Building is close to completion.
One of the main tenants is PureView Health Center. Earlier this month, they opened the doors of a new downtown clinic.
“We’re so excited,” said PureView CEO Jill Steeley. “I think I started looking into a downtown clinic probably four or five years ago, so this has been a long time in the making, and to see it come to fruition has been so exciting for all of us.”
The new clinic will host primary care providers, dental care, a full pharmacy and mental health services. However, they’ve only been able to launch some of their services so far, because of shipping delays on equipment, supplies and furniture.
“We opened our medical clinic as well as our pharmacy – however, it took us more than a week to receive any medications for the pharmacy,” said Steeley. “It’s been kind of a slow rollout due to all the shipping delays, but thankfully we have a flexible staff and we have flexible patients and everybody’s been really patient with us.”
PureView will eventually have up to five or six primary care providers at the downtown clinic, along with clinical social workers and addiction counselors. The dental clinic is expected to open in mid-February.
Steeley says adding this second location – in addition to their clinic on Helena’s east side – will help them reach underserved populations.
“I think that it’ll really be utilized by the community who work and live in this area,” she said.
PureView has had a presence downtown for years, operating the Healthcare for the Homeless program out of an office at God’s Love Shelter. Steeley says they were initially looking for a better space for that program, but they couldn’t find anything that fit their needs.
“It just worked out that I started talking to the developer of this building, and he said, ‘Let me help you,’” she said. “And he did.”
The managing partners of the group behind the Seeley Building are Rex Seeley and Ray Kuntz. The city of Helena was looking for someone to purchase and redevelop the former city bus depot.
“It was going up not for the highest offer, but for the best project – and we were, thankfully, the best project,” Seeley said.
The building is named in honor of Seeley’s parents, who are also longtime friends of Kuntz.
The two lower floors of the building are now almost fully occupied. Helena Vision Center and Core Wellness have located their businesses there. In addition, the Roman Catholic Diocese of Helena has moved in, along with its foundation, Catholic Social Services of Montana and the Montana Catholic Conference.
“It was amazing how many people we got and how quickly we got them,” Seeley said.
The third floor is still under construction. It will eventually include seven condominiums – two of which will be held as affordable housing, to meet a city recommendation of 20%.
Seeley said he hopes the building can serve as an example for what can be accomplished with mixed-use development downtown.
“We have a lot of interest from other people that are talking to me about projects they’re looking at,” he said. “So it’s going to keep growing; downtown is really booming.”
The city sold the bus depot property to the developers for $300,000 in 2019, with the proceeds from that sale going into the city’s new affordable housing trust fund.
Seeley says, once the new building is fully completed and occupied, it will likely be valued at more than $15 million.
