The former Smith’s supermarket building on North Montana Avenue has a new owner.

Dick Anderson, owner of Dick Anderson Construction, confirmed this week he bought the building a couple weeks ago.

The top floor of the tan building has been vacant since 2004, when the Smith’s Food and Drug Center closed. The Sewing Palace and Elements Consign & Design occupy the bottom of the building, which faces Helena Avenue.

“I’ve looked at it a couple of times and thought it was a good piece of property, and they (owners Hustad LLC) finally came down to what I thought was a reasonable (asking price),” Anderson said.

Anderson is moving quickly to fill the top floor of the building. He’s had inquiries from several potential tenants, he said, and hopes to have something lined up in a matter of weeks. He said he’d prefer a single tenant to take the entire top floor, but said he’d entertain the possibility of dividing the space.

One industry that won’t fill the space: self-storage. Anderson said he had an inquiry from a storage business but turned it down.

“I’m looking for projects that have jobs with them,” he said. “It doesn’t do me or the community a lot of good to put a bunch of storage in there.”

He said both of the building’s Helena Avenue-facing tenants have indicated they want to stay.

Hit the Road, Turkey: If you’re traveling for Thanksgiving this year, you’ll have a little more company than travelers did at this time a year ago, according to AAA.

The group estimates that 38.4 million Americans will travel 50 miles or more this holiday weekend, up 1.4 percent from last year’s 37.8 million. AAA sees it as a sign that there is an economic recovery, however small, under way.

In the Mountain region that includes Montana, Thanksgiving travel is expected to be almost flat at 2.5 million people.

Nearly everyone will be driving — 86 percent, according to AAA. Over the last decade, there’s been a real shift away from airline travel at Thanksgiving. Since 2000, the number of Americans traveling by air over the Thanksgiving weekend has fallen by 62 percent. In addition to ongoing economic difficulties, AAA blames things like increased airport security, more frequent flight delays, decreased capacity and added surcharges and fees for contributing to the decline.

On the positive side, AAA says airfare, lodging and rental car costs will all be lower this year than in 2008.

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