Crosswalk coffee place caters to Carroll

It's not too hard to find the newest coffee house that caters to Carroll College students. Just look for the crosswalk across Benton Avenue that leads from O'Connell Hall over to ... The Crosswalk.

The Crosswalk isn't technically a business -- coffee is available by donation only, and there's nothing for sale -- instead, it's recognized as a "gathering place" where students can have group meetings or study late at night when other coffee shops have closed.

The Crosswalk is in a house that once had three apartments and now has two, one beneath and one above the gathering space. The house is owned by the Montana District Council of the Assemblies of God Church.

"This summer we took down all the walls and made it into a common area," said Johanna Shafer, a Carroll junior from Seattle who lives in the house. She said retired contractor Del Sharbono was invaluable in helping get the space ready.

The Crosswalk opens in time for students to get a cup of coffee before class and is generally open until midnight. Shafer said a Bible study group uses the space a couple nights a week, and movie screenings on weekends draw good crowds.

"It's a space where students can gather and hang out," she said. "Nobody (other coffee shops) wants a bunch of college kids being rowdy at their business, but they can come here and have music on if they want to."

Donations typically cover the cost of coffee, mixers and other condiments, she said. There's an oven on hand so students can bake their own desserts or prepare other light snacks.

Into the Big Sky: January wasn't a great month for the airline industry in Montana. Overall passenger traffic around the state was 10 percent lower than in January a year ago, and nearly every major airport showed a decrease in boardings and deplanings, according to statistics compiled by the Aeronautics Division of the Montana Department of Transportation.

One notable exception was Helena, where the number of people getting on and getting off commercial planes, 12,091, was 4.4 percent higher than a year ago. Of course, the Queen City has more flights now than it did a year ago, since United Express added two daily departures and arrivals to and from Denver.

The only other larger airport to show a year-over-year gain was Great Falls, which eked out a .6 percent increase.

All the others were down from a year ago: Billings was down 17.4 percent, Bozeman down 4.7 percent, Butte off 27.6 percent, Kalispell down 15 percent and Missoula down 10.9 percent.

E-mail your Open for Business ideas to john.harrington@

helenair.com.