Idaho Business Review IBR
Home2 Suites at Fifth and Front streets would be the fifth new downtown Boise hotel in three years. Image from Capital City Development Corp.
A Wisconsin group is expected to start construction in September on a new 540-space, seven-level parking garage at Fifth and Front streets in downtown Boise as part of a seven-story, 138-room Home2 Suites by Hilton hotel project.
The garage would wrap around the rear and Fifth Street sides of the hotel, said Clay Carley, general manager of Front Street Investors LLC, which owns the roughly 1-acre property upon which the hotel and garage will be built.
Carley said the Middleton, Wisconsin-based Raymond Group would likely start construction on the Home2 Suites about three months after garage work begins or around the end of the year. The garage would open in fall 2019 with the hotel’s expected opening at the end of 2019 or early 2020.
Plans for this project were originally submitted to the city in December 2016 but were shelved until they were resubmitted in November 2017.
The Home2 Suites by Hilton would be built on this surface parking lot across from C.W. Moore Plaza (rear). Photo by Teya Vitu.
The hotel would be the fifth new downtown Boise hotel to start construction since 2015 and at least the 39th hotel either opened, under construction or in planning across Idaho. The Home2 Suites would be the third in Idaho after the Idaho Falls hotel that opened in September 2015 and the Nampa hotel under construction next to the Ford Idaho Center.
Home2 Suites by Hilton is a pet-friendly, extended-stay, all-suites chain that first opened in February 2011 in Fayetteville, North Carolina. The chain now has 277 hotels open in the U.S. with another 52 expected to open by January 2019, according to the Home2 Suites website.
Raymond Group would own and operate the hotel, and Front Street Investors would own the garage. Raymond Group already owns the Hampton Inn & Suites at Myrtle Street and Capitol Boulevard in downtown Boise.
The Capital City Development Corp. on May 14 agreed to by 200 monthly passes in the garage for $360,000 for seven years with the passes to be resold to the public.
First Street Partners could cancel the parking pass agreement with a 30-day notice. The owners of the nearby The Fowler Apartments similarly had an agreement to sell 89 of its 189 parking space to CCDC as public parking spaces for $2.6 million, but developer LocalConstruct decided to keep all the spaces for The Fowler before the apartments opened earlier this year, said Ross Borden, CCDC’s finance and administration director.
The Home2 Suites garage (orange structure) will be behind the hotel. Image courtesy of Front Street Investors.
Borden said the $2.6 million will now serve as seed funding for the estimated $70 million new Boise main library project.
The estimated cost for the garage is $18.25 million and the hotel cost is estimated at $31 million. Gary Brink & Associates of Middleton, Wisc., is the architect for both. ESI Construction of Meridian is the general contractor for the garage.
The hotel/garage project includes a .32-acre sliver along Front Street owned by CCDC. The CCDC Board of Commissioners on May 14 also agreed to sell that thin triangular strip to Front Street Investors for $300,000 on the condition that the garage and hotel or other $25 million commercial enterprise is completed within three years.
The sale agreement also calls for construction to start by Jan. 1 or the sliver reverts back to CCDC. The redevelopment agency also plans to spend $1.478 million on the hotel/garage property to build two public plaza/parks for $165,000, do streetscape improvements for $581,517, carry out utility work for $636,775 and spend $94,750 on street and alley improvements.
The expected $2.8 million increase in property tax revenues generated by the hotel and garage improvements is expected to cover these public improvements, said Laura Williams, CCDC’s project manager for property development.
The two parks/plazas would be at Fifth and Front and at Sixth at the back corner of the property. Carley said the Fifth and Front space would be a dog park to go along with the pet-friendly mantra of Home2 Suites.
