GBAD backs off convention center plans, has $30 million it can spend on Boise

The Greater Boise Auditorium District board has switched gears after more than a decade of trying to develop a new convention center, voting last month to open up its nearly $30 million in available funds to an array of possible projects.

The board has $11 million in available cash for a capital project and bonding capacity for another roughly $20 million. For years, board members had been adamant that the money be spent on expanding the convention center — or building a new one.

GBAD operates the Boise Centre, an 85,000-square-foot convention center that opened in 1990.

“We’re looking at different options besides the expansion,” said GBAD  member Hy Kloc. “We’re looking at just about everything now. We’re going back to just about square one to make sure we are doing the right things for the right reasons.”

With $30 million in unencumbered funds, board members will have an array of projects to choose from. Among the most publicized is an effort to build a new sports stadium to house the Boise Hawks and a minor league soccer team. The new Hawks stadium would also be available for other events.

Civic leaders have been pushing for GBAD funds to be included in a stadium project in the past year, but until November they had met resistance from the board.

Auditorium district executive director Pat Rice said in February that a December 2011 vote had dedicated all of the board’s cash to a convention center expansion, which didn’t leave a lot of room for other projects.

“There was no ifs, ands, buts, maybes or baseball stadiums” in the vote, he said in February.

But more and more stadium supporters, including Hawks general manager Todd Rahr, mentioned using the taxes collected from hotel rooms — revenues that go to GBAD — for a piece of the financing puzzle for the stadium.

Most recently, Boise Mayor David Bieter said the city was not going to be the solution to financing a new stadium and pointed to the auditorium district.

“If a ball park’s going to happen, the best public finance opportunity is through the auditorium district,” Bieter said in December, adding that a major convention center expansion may not be the best course of action for the board. “We need an expansion to compete with other markets and even for our own events, but there are a lot of cities with an awful lot of convention space going vacant.”

“It would be really unfortunate for people to assume” that the the board’s change of heart means that a baseball stadium will be included in new plans, said auditorium district board member Rob Perez.

Perez said the board will be considering all options in how to partner with other government agencies, private development and academia in the coming months. Nothing is off the table, he said.

“It may be the world’s largest ball of twine,” Perez said. “This could be a $30 million project here … It could be a tremendous economic catalyst, but if we approach this on the basis that it is all about an arena or all about a convention center or all about whatever, then we will fail.”

Kloc said some kind of expansion, although not necessarily a big one, will be included in the auditorium district’s plans. Still, there is a large opportunity to partner with other groups to build something that will create economic value for Boise, he said.

“There are a lot of things we can do and there is a lot of things that people want us to do,” Kloc said.

Previously, the board had been focusing almost exclusively on a piece of land owned by the district abutting the Simplot family’s JUMP  development on Ninth and Front streets.

The site required a privately owned hotel that would work with a new convention center, however, and the entire project would likely have cost more than was available to the board.

Other sites were either too expensive or unobtainable, Kloc said.

“Every time we came up with something we wanted to try and do we ended up running into a brick wall,” Kloc said.

The board will meet near the end of January to decide what process is will use to consider all the options for the district’s money.

Perez said the board looks forward to hearing from everyone with an idea, but that people should not become too attached to one avenue of progress.

“Bring an agenda, but don’t hold on tightly to it,” he said.