A construction worker died from his injuries Tuesday after a large concrete column broke free and hit him in the head at the former Labor Temple Hall at South 29th Street and First Avenue South.
The man had been standing under the column when it hit him in the head, Billings Police Sgt. Harley Cagle said at the scene.
Emergency crews were dispatched to the incident at about 8:30 a.m., and the man was unconscious as he was being loaded into an American Medical Response ambulance at the construction site.
In an email sent shortly before 5 p.m., Fisher Construction Inc. President Jim Berve said a worker "succumbed to his injuries."
The company wrote on its Facebook page: "We have extended our deepest sympathies to the family and are offering as much support to the family as they need to deal with the aftermath of this tragedy."
The company is investigating the incident.
Fisher Construction Inc. co-owner Brent Sumner confirmed Tuesday morning the man was an employee. Fisher Construction is the general contractor for the Community Leadership & Development Inc. housing project, which includes a renovation of portions of the historic building.
The foreman at the scene declined to comment.
The construction crew did not appear to be working on the concrete column, which was part of the former Labor Temple Hall exterior, Cagle said.
"They were trying to remove it at some point, they'd chipped away at it, and it came down on its own," Cagle said after speaking with construction workers at the scene.
The man had been wearing a hard hat at the time, Cagle said.
The former Labor Temple Hall is being renovated as part of the low-income housing project, which was announced in November 2016. Construction began last summer, and is being completed with a $1.1 million grant from the Gianforte Family Foundation.
Traffic was partially blocked at the busy intersection Tuesday morning as police and medical personnel responded to the incident. Billings Fire Department also responded.
The construction industry has one of the highest rates of workplace injuries in Montana, which in 2016 had the fourth-highest overall workplace injury rate among U.S. states for which data was available.
The 2016 statewide rate was 4.2 injuries for every 100 full-time workers, compared with a nationwide rate of 2.9. Within the construction industry, Montana's injury rate was 4.9 per 100 full-time workers.
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The old Labor Temple Hall on Billings’ South Side isn’t going to remain a shell of its former self for much longer.
Community Leadership and Development Inc., a faith-based nonprofit development agency with a track record of constructing housing and providing services to people in need, has purchased the building and is preparing to abate the lead and asbestos inside the century-old hall and begin demolishing portions of it.
What will emerge — about $2.8 million and maybe nine months later — will be a dozen new efficiency apartments, priced below market rates; space for the ministry’s offices, which are now in two buildings; increased capacity for Hannah House Ministries, which serves low-income women and their children; and, perhaps, a business incubator or an old-fashioned community meeting spot in keeping with the history of the Labor Temple Hall, at 24 S. 29th St.
CLDI purchased the dilapidated building in September, said Eric Basye, the agency’s executive director, and already has the money on hand for abatement, demolition and design work, which is being done by Collaborative Design Architects.
The agency is raising money to renovate the hall and construct the new apartments, which will be built on two new floors planned to rise above the hall.
Stockman Bank will match up to $25,000 in donations to help with the work. Visit www.cldibillings.org or call CLDI at 406-256-3002 before Dec. 31 to have your donation matched by the bank.
“This is something we’ve been dreaming about for two years,” Basye said Thursday during a tour of the 14,000-square-foot hall, which has been, in turn, rooms to rent (1889-1912), a Chinese laundry and grocery store (beginning in 1912), a wholesale candy building (through 1944) and, since that time, the Labor Temple Hall. A grocery store also operated on the property after World War II through 1958.
According to a history compiled by CLDI’s Lisa Reinschmidt, 25 labor unions were represented and housed in the cavernous hall, which was also used for community gatherings such as quinceaneras (the celebration of a girl’s 15th birthday), funerals, wakes and baby showers.
Reclaiming and restoring the hall, reconstructing the sidewalks and constructing off-street parking “not only mirrors its historical past,” Reinschmidt wrote, “but also seeks to recreate what was once a place of pride, fellowship and community in the South Side.”
Reinschmidt, who runs Hannah House and handles development for CLDI, said that opening up more space for Hannah House, at 109 S. 32nd St., will enable the ministry to serve 15 women at a time, up from eight.
“We now have one room open, and we got nine applications for it in five days,” she said.
The benefits of the planned new facility “are too numerous to nail down,” she said, but they include proximity to needed services, including RiverStone Health, case management through Family Promise and downtown employment opportunities, including cleaning positions at downtown hotels.
“A lot of women we work with don’t drive,” she said. “They have to get to work on foot and come home in the dark of night.”
“Our goal,” she said of the expanded facilities, “is to get women off of receiving services and restore their dignity.”
As he showed off CLDI’s future home, Basye paused inside a large, empty room that practically calls out to be transformed into a community center.
“We’re doing a community survey about how this space can best be used,” he said, and the results of the survey will influence how the space gets transformed.
One option, he said, is a community work space to house small businesses. Tenants could pay rent on a sliding scale.
An extended area in the hall's basement once was the longest bar in Montana, Basye said. It features an old concrete safe, proof that plenty of money changed hands there.
Back in the day, Basye said, parents would bring their children to the bar to enjoy a few drinks and maybe a meal while children played in a separate area.
While CLDI doesn’t plan to open any bars soon, Basye said it’s that kind of community togetherness that the agency will be trying to recreate at the new site.
The project is called Katapheugo, an ancient Greek term that refers to people fleeing for refuge. That’s a “fitting definition,” according to Reinschmidt, as the agency “seeks to offer refuge and hope in a marginalized community.”
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Community group has big plans for old labor temple
By: Ed Kemmick | February 17, 2017
Ed Kemmick/Last Best News
Community Leadership and Development Inc. has big plans for the old Labor Temple Hall at First Avenue South and South 29th Street.
Eric Basye was expecting as many as 80 volunteers to come down to the old Labor Temple Hall on South 29th Street on Saturday for what he’s calling “our first official demo day.”
Basye is the director of Community Leadership and Development Inc., a Christian organization that works on the South Side of Billings under the slogan “Rebuilding Lives, Restoring Families, Re-Neighboring Communities.”
The demolition work will be going on inside the old Labor Temple Hall, a solid brick building at 29th and First Avenue South that has 14,000 square feet between the ground floor and the basement.
CLDI’s plan is to use the long-abandoned building as its new headquarters, a community gathering space and, after adding two floors to the eastern half of the building, 14 to 16 affordable apartments.
Moving the organization’s offices from their current location, a few blocks away at 109½ S. 32nd St., would allow for an expansion of CLDI’s Hannah House program, which provides housing and life-skills training for women in crisis. The program already occupies two houses on the property in front of the CLDI offices.
The new building will be called Kataphuego, Greek for “refuge.” CLDI started looking into relocating its offices three years ago, thinking then that the new location could also include a café, coffee shop and community space.
Those plans evolved as the search for a building continued. At one point, Basye said, they thought they would be able to buy the old Our Lady of Guadalupe Catholic Church on South 29th Street.
After that fell through, he said, “we looked at a ton of different buildings” before settling on the renovated Crane Building, a block west of the Labor Temple Hall on First Avenue. But the asking price was too much, so they settled at last on the labor building. It was a decision Basye was happy with.
“We had the opportunity to rehabilitate a building that was literally falling apart,” he said.
Built in 1889, it was used as a boarding house, Chinese laundry and grocery store, a warehouse and then a labor temple. In recent years it had been used for storage by Southside Pawn. Karri Hallock, CLDI’s financial administrator and property manager, said the building hadn’t been connected to city water since 2001.
The CLDI bought the building in September and has been working with Collaborative Design Architects since then on asbestos abatement, demolition plans and a design for the expanded building.
Ed Kemmick/Last Best News
CLDI Director Eric Basye, left, talks about the Labor Temple Hall project with CLDI employees Karri Hallock, Drew Thompson and Steve Houlihan.
On demolition day Saturday, the plan is to rip out everything from ceiling tiles to walls, leaving only one structural wall in the middle of half the ground floor. The western half of the ground floor and the same half of the basement would be connected by a stairwell and used for a community gathering space, and also available for event rental.
The other half of the ground floor could possibly house a café and catering business and maybe some space for launching small businesses. Then, 8,000 square feet will be added on two new floors above the eastern half of the building to create affordable efficiency and one-bedroom apartments.
Creating affordable housing has been the main focus of the CLDI since its founding in 1981 by former state legislator Dave Hagstrom.
Basye said the most recent estimate of the entire Labor Temple Hall project is $3.25 million. The CLDI already has about $1.9 million, mostly in the form of local donations and grants from private foundations.
That total also includes a $200,000 grant from the Downtown Billings Alliance, which would be used for abatement and construction of infrastructure like sidewalks, curbs and gutters. That grant, though, still needs to be approved by the City Council, Basye said.
Plans call for making a parking area out of a vacant lot on the north side of the building and moving the main entrance from South 29th Street to the north side.
Basye said the organization is still working with the architects on final plans for the renovation and is working internally to decide exactly what will end up in the building. They’ve got some time to figure that out.
He said the CLDI hopes to obtain final city approval for its building plans by March and then to start construction by May or June. Construction will probably take 12 to 18 months, he said.