HELENA — Construction has started on the Bell Hotel, a two-story, 14-room, locally-owned and operated hotel between Lyndale Avenue and Memorial Drive in Helena. It's a nearly $4 million project that's been in the works for about four years.
“We are not affiliated with a franchise or a chain hotel system,” Bell Hotel co-founder AshLy Tubbs said. “It’s just the two of us, and we’re small-scale.”
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Tubbs and Karli Mosey have been working on the Bell Hotel for years. This is their second business venture together, during the COVID-19 pandemic, they started Community Crate, a subscription box service with items from Helena businesses. Mosey and Tubbs said they worked really well together and wanted to do something to showcase Helena on a larger scale—and the idea for the Bell Hotel was born.
“We wanted to present a space really authentic to Helena,” Mosey said. “The goal—maximizing the location, the park in our backyard and being at the footsteps of all these wonderful small businesses, and access to nature.”
Local Helena flavor will be found throughout the inside of the hotel, too.
“We want to have local art on the walls, we want to showcase local delicacies, and we want to promote local businesses,” Mosey said.
Tubbs and Mosey first approached the owner of the property between Lyndale Avenue and Memorial Drive in the summer of 2021.
In 2022, the two secured tax increment financing money to help demolish the vacant Memorial Park Apartments. Now, construction has started. The goal is to have the Bell Motel open to guests in Spring 2026.
“It’s definitely still the beginning of a very long journey,” Tubbs said. “It took a lot of hard work to get here and we wouldn’t be here without the many, many people in Helena that helped us.”
While the building will be new, the Bell Hotel has roots in Helena history. According to local history website Helena as She Was, a hotel called Treasure State Court was built on that site in the 1930s, and it was renovated and rebranded as the Bell Motel in the 1950s.
“This is us giving new life to a really cool historical feature that used to exist here,” Tubbs said.
Tubbs and Mosey are looking to hire six people to help them run the hotel, and they’re looking to partner with local artists and businesses to feature their work and products. You can get in touch on their website.
