The first office building is taking shape at the Ten Mile Road/I-84 interchange. Photo by Pete Grady.
The five-year wait for development at the Ten Mile Road interchange at Interstate 84 ended in September as Brighton Corp. and Gardner Co. started construction on their joint venture, Ten Mile Crossing. The project will bring office buildings, retail and housing to the western edge of Meridian.
The four tilt-up walls are up at the interchange’s northeast quadrant for the two-story, 70,000-square-foot new home of benefits administrator AmeriBen. Brighton Corp. CEO David Turnbull anticipates completing the building in May, with AmeriBen moving in during June.
Turnbull expects to start construction in March on a second office building measuring four stories and 64,000 square feet. He will relocate his Brighton offices to this building, which will also house Horrocks Engineering.
“We are doing site plans on three to five more multiple-story, four-story-plus office buildings,” Turnbull said. “(Office demand for Ten Mile Road) has changed pretty dramatically over the last six months. Activity breeds activity.”
Except for the tilt-up AmeriBen structures, the other office buildings will be steel and glass. Babcock Design Group is the project architect and ESI Construction is the general contractor.
Back in summer, a third office building was discussed but a construction date was unknown. Now Turnbull has “substantive pre-leasing” in place and expects to start building the five-story, 127,000-square-foot third structure in May.
Ten Mile Crossing and Brighton’s Ten Mile Creek, a combined 130 acres, are the first projects for the 800 undeveloped acres surrounding the I-84/Ten Mile Road interchange, considered the largest, prime, undeveloped freeway interchange between Portland and Salt Lake City.
Ten Mile Creek will be a retail complex of an expected five buildings at Ten Mile and Franklin roads. The first announced tenant there is a 6,300-square-foot Primary Health Medical Group clinic that Rocky Mountain Companies will develop some time in 2017.
Turnbull is negotiating with two tenants for a second 10,000-square-foot retail building at Ten Mile Creek, and is negotiating with three tenants for additional retail buildings.
“We’re also exploring multi-family housing,” Turnbull said. “We’re working pretty aggressively right now. Hopefully, some time next year (some apartments will be built).”
The Idaho State Tax Commission needs new space because the lease at Washington Group Plaza expires in June 2017. File photo.
Forty-six proposals were submitted by the Dec. 15 deadline to provide new office space for the Idaho State Tax Commission and possibly consolidate all the state offices in leased space in Boise.
State officials will aim to narrow the proposals down to a short list by the first week of January and have a signed agreement in place by the end of February, said Linda Miller, the statewide leasing manager at the Idaho Department of Administration.
The department on Oct. 21 issued a request for proposals for at least 110,000 square feet for the tax commission. The RFP also cast a wide net looking for up to 600,000 square feet to consolidate state offices, which now occupy leased space in 38 locations in the Boise area.
The proposals were separated into three groups: proposals offering up to 100,000 square feet; proposals at 100,000 square feet; and proposals large enough to hold several state offices.
“In theory, you could build (up to 600,000 square feet) on an existing site on 11 acres,” Miller said of one proposal.
Miller said 26 proposals involved new buildings from 80,000 to 600,000 square feet, and 17 proposals patched together existing locations. The largest offered 484,000 square feet in several buildings.
The state received 28 proposals from developers and 12 from brokers (some proposals were combined, accounting for the lower number, Miller said). Of those, 28 were from Idaho applicants and 12 from out-of-state applicants.
Miller wants to move the Tax Commission before August 2018. The need to relocate the Tax Commission, Idaho Department of Finance and Idaho Department of Fish and Game is driven by the possible sale of Washington Group Plaza, though the Finance and Fish and Game leases don’t expire until July 2021 and June 2019, respectively.
Hotel 43 and The Grove Hotel (distant left) now have the same owners with the Boise Centre sitting between them. Photo by Teya Vitu.
The owners of The Grove Hotel, the largest hotel in downtown Boise, have bought Hotel 43 and the Courtyard by Marriott, another downtown hotel on Broadway.
Block 22 LLC expects to close on the 162-room Courtyard on Dec. 7 and the 112-room Hotel 43 on Jan. 6. Block 22, which built and opened The Grove Hotel on Dec. 31, 1997, will now have a combined 524 rooms in downtown Boise.
With three new downtown hotels opening within three blocks of the Boise Centre in the next few months, Block 22 now has the two closest hotels to the convention center. The 250-room Grove shares Grove Plaza with the Boise Centre and Hotel 43 is across the street to the west of the convention center.
John Cunningham
“We like the locations of both,” said John Cunningham, CEO/president of Block 22. “Hotel 43’s proximity not just to the Boise Centre but to us was appealing. Courtyard’s proximity to St. Luke’s and Boise State was appealing.”
The sales price was not disclosed. The assessed value for the Hotel 43 property is $8.62 million and for the Courtyard by Marriott is $11.9 million, according to Ada County Assessor records.
The Block 22 ownership comprises 50 percent JRS Properties III, a Simplot entity, and 50 percent WC/WLDC Idaho LLC, a company headed by A.J. Balukoff with Larry Leasure, Jim White, Jerry Jenkins and other investors.
Hotel 43 and Courtyard had primarily the same ownership group under two separate companies: Cameron S-Sixteen Hospitality at Hotel 43 and Cameron S-Sixteen Broadway at Courtyard. These are made up of S-Sixteen, a Simplot family partnership, in a joint venture with Interstate Hotels & Resorts, and Cameron Investments with Rick Clark, Ben Pursley and other investors.
Ben Pursley
“It was a cycle of events for us,” said Pursley, who stepped into the partnership a year ago upon the death of his father, attorney Ken Pursley. “Having recently done renovations at both hotels, what should we do now? Should we ride it out? We just thought it was a good time to go to market.”
The Courtyard was renovated for $3.4 million in 2015-16, and Hotel 43 got a $2.8 million renovation in 2014-15.
Cameron S-Sixteen and Block 22 were not aware of each others’ interest in buying or selling. Cameron S-Sixteen listed the properties with CBRE in Seattle.
“We got wind these two were listed,” Cunningham said.
“I think it’s a tremendous benefit,” Boise Centre Executive Director Pat Rice said of having local ownership of the lodging closest to the convention center. “They already know the market. We’re dealing with a known entity, which is a plus. It’s not somebody coming in and trying to reinvent the market.”
With Hotel 43, Cameron Investments reimagined a former Statehouse Inn in 2006-07 into an eclectic design that won plaudits from guests, Pursley said.
“We gave our design team a lot of latitude to embrace the local Idaho art scene,” said Pursley, the operations manager at Campur Management, the operating entity for both Cameron S-Sixteen companies.
Ten years ago, S-Sixteen owned the Courtyard by Marriott and Cameron Investments owned Hotel 43.
“We brought (S-Sixteen) into Hotel 43 and they brought us into Courtyard,” Pursley said.
Rick Clark and Ken Pursley had dominating roles in the partnership in the early years but both had stepped back in recent years. Pursley, founding partner at the Boise law firm Givens Pursley, died in a boating accident on the Amazon in Brazil in October 2015.
Ben Pursley said his father’s death played no role in deciding to sell.
“We’ve been in it for 10 years,” he said. “We tend to be not super long-term holders.”
Block 22, meanwhile, had expansion in mind.
“We’ve been looking for growth opportunities for some time,” Cunningham said. “We looked seriously at adding 100 rooms on the Grove footprint. We started looking at nearby properties. Should we build a new hotel? We were moving in that direction and when the other hotels were announced, we put things on hold.”
Block 22 will get the keys to Hotel 43 just as the new 113-room Inn at 500 Capitol at Myrtle Street and Capitol Boulevard welcomes its first guests in the first week of January. The 150-room Hyatt Place and 186-room Residence Inn by Marriott are also expected to open in downtown Boise in the coming months.
“We’re certainly aware of the properties under construction,” Cunningham said. “Long term, we think (buying Hotel 43 and Courtyard by Marriott) makes a lot of sense for our program.”
The Grove Hotel is the third largest hotel in Idaho behind the Coeur d’Alene Resort and the Riverside Hotel in Garden City, though Sun Valley Resort has a combined 440 rooms at the Sun Valley Lodge, Sun Valley Inn and 227 apartments.
“We are taking the reins of two very well-run hotels with strong management teams, headed by Andrea Cox at the Courtyard and Lisa Benjamin at Hotel 43. Virtually nothing is in need of change,” Cunningham said. “The names and brand affiliates will remain the same and we are excited to continue a long, mutually beneficial relationship with Chandlers Steakhouse.”
Three in a row: The state-owned 10 Barrel Brewing building and the neighboring parking lot and Garro Building will be auctioned Dec. 1 along with a few other Boise and Idaho Falls commercial buildings. Photo by Teya Vitu.
The state-owned building that houses 10 Barrel Brewing in downtown Boise will go on the auction block Dec. 1, as will eight other state-owned commercial buildings in downtown Boise and Idaho Falls.
As with state-owned cottage properties at Payette and Priest Lakes, the Idaho Department of Lands is considering divesting itself of 19 commercial properties now and in 2017 that are classified as state endowment trust lands.
The Dec. 1 auction will start at 1 p.m. at the Courtyard Marriott Meridian Hotel, 1789 S. Eagle Road, in Meridian. Thornton Oliver Keller Commercial Real Estate is serving as the state’s broker.
The combined appraised value for the properties is $20.03 million. The minimum bid on each property is the appraised value, Idaho Department of Lands spokeswoman Sharla Arledge said.
The auction involves three adjoining properties on Bannock Street that include 10 Barrel Brewing (Sherm Perry Building; appraised value $1.81 million), the Garro building ($2.41 million) and the parking lot between those two ($325,000); a former bank building at 800 W. State St. ($830,000); Central Washington Place, 602 N. Fifth St. ($4.185 million); Affordable Storage, 448-450 S. Maple Grove Rd. ($3.01 million); commercial buildings ($1.14 million) and a commercial lot ($220,000) on the 900 block of East Lincoln Road in Idaho Falls; and an office building ($6.1 million) on University Boulevard in Idaho Falls.
The State Board of Land Commissioners in May approved a strategic investment plan to consider reinvesting money gained from commercial and lake cottage properties in timberland and, potentially, some farmland. The Land Board in February had approved auctioning most state-owned commercial properties managed by Idaho Department of Lands, Alredge said.
The Land Department acquired the 19 commercial properties between 1993 and 2012. Many were acquired in the 1990s as Payette Lake cottage owners exchanged downtown Boise properties they owned for ownership of the state-owned land they leased under their cottages, Alredge said.
These lands were granted by Congress to Idaho at the time of statehood as endowment trust land held on behalf of beneficiaries, primarily public schools.
The state is selling these commercial properties and the cottage lots at the lakes to maximize the long-term financial returns for the endowment trust lands, Arledge said.
One Chili’s in Boise is located across from Albertsons Stadium. Photo by Teya Vitu.
An Ogden, Utah fast food franchiser on Oct. 28 acquired all seven Chili’s Grill & Bar restaurants in Idaho through U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Great Falls, Mont.
In all, Paradigm Restaurants, an offshoot of Meridian Restaurants in Ogden, acquired 11 Chili’s in Idaho, Montana and Washington that had been owned by Shoot the Moon LLC, a Great Falls, Mont., company that filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in October 2015.
The purchase for an undisclosed price includes two Chili’s in Boise, two in Spokane, and one each in Meridian, Twin Falls, Pocatello, Idaho Falls, Coeur d’Alene, Great Falls and Helena, Mont.
Meridian Restaurants specifically established Paradigm to operate these Chili’s with intentions to expand to 20 restaurants in these three states and potentially other states, said John Little, vice president of operations at Paradigm Restaurants.
Idaho expansions likely would include Nampa, which Shoot the Moon already had eyes on, and possibly Lewiston and other cities Little didn’t want to discuss.
Paradigm intends to install new kitchen equipment in nearly all of the Chili’s as well as remodel bars at a combined cost exceeding $500,000, Little said.
“We are willing to invest in our properties,” he said.
Prior to shifting over to Paradigm, Little headed Meridian’s 20 Burger King operations in Montana and Wyoming, where 13 stores were remodeled. Meridian operates 86 Burger Kings in seven states and two El Pollo Loco restaurants in Arizona.
Shoot the Moon also owned three On the Border Mexican Grills in Boise, Meridian and Great Falls that were shut down in October 2015. Shoot the Moon’s president, Kenneth Hatzenbeller, faces five felony charges filed in August by the Montana State Securities Commission, the Great Falls Tribune reported.
The Idaho Tax Commission lease at Washington Group Plaza expires in June 2017. Photo by Teya Vitu.
If you have 110,000 to 600,000 square feet of vacant office space in Ada County to lease or sell, or even a desire to build, the state of Idaho is looking for you.
The state Department of Administration issued a request for proposals Oct. 21 for at least 110,000 square feet of office space as a new home for the Idaho State Tax Commission, whose lease at Washington Group Plaza expires in June 2017. The RFP elaborates that as many as 600,000 square feet of new or existing office space are desired.
The deadline for proposals is Dec. 15.
“I’ve been talking to brokers who say I’ll get 40 responses, which I find amazing,” said Linda Miller, the statewide leasing manager at the Idaho Department of Administration. “We are trying to negotiate a short-term extension.”
Miller wants to relocate the tax commission before August 2018.
Bill Beck wonders how successful the state will be in lining up so much office space.
“There are 24 million square feet of office space (across the Treasure Valley) with about 10 percent vacancy,” said Beck, founding principal of Tenant Realty Advisors, a Boise commercial real estate firm that exclusively represents tenants. “That’s about 2.2 to 2.3 million square feet. If they take 600,000 square feet, that would take 25 percent of the vacancies away.
“Right now,” Beck continued, “if you are looking for 50,000 to 80,000 square feet of space, there might be between four and six. There’s not that many options. If you want 150,000 square feet, there’s one option. If you want 200,000 to 300,000 square feet, to the best of my knowledge, there are none.”
St. Luke’s Health System is evaluating whether to buy 556,000-square-foot Washington Group Plaza with four large structures at the eastern edge of downtown Boise.
Whether the sale goes through or not, the state must relocate the tax commission, Idaho Department of Fish and Game and Idaho Department of Finance as their leases expire at the Washington Group Plaza, the former corporate headquarters for Morrison Knudsen Corp., Miller said.
The tax commission will be the first to go. The Department of Finance lease on 21,132 square feet expires in July 2021, and the Fish and Game lease on 28,022 square feet expires in June 2019. Miller said those leases would remain valid even if Washington Group Plaza changes ownership.
The State of Idaho leases 38 properties in Boise. Image courtesy of Idaho Department of Administration.
Moving the three agencies inspired Miller to find ways to consolidate 38 different state-leased locations in Boise to fewer than 10 leased locations with the requested range of 110,000 to 600,000 square feet. The state leases 704,000 square feet in Boise for $11 million a year, a dollar figure that has doubled since 1996, Miller said.
“(The consolidation) could be anywhere in Ada County, including Meridian or Eagle,” she said. “This is the biggest RFP I have ever done and I’ve been here for 17 years. It’s forward thinking. It’s looking at containing our costs.”
She is focusing on moving agencies that don’t need to be in downtown Boise and with leases that expire in the next five years. These are agencies not located in the 15 buildings that comprise the 1 million-plus square feet of the Capitol Mall.
Miller is considering leasing or purchasing office space. She’s also considering using existing buildings or building new buildings, even a new campus, if an interested developer steps forward.
“I would prefer buying,” she said. “We will be looking at leasing with an option to buy or a phased purchase program. We’re looking for some creative concepts.”
Miller estimates new construction would cost between $100 and $200 per square foot for a projected total cost of $60 million to $120 million that would require legislative approval. She said build-out could be in phases over a number of years.
Because it has an “annual appropriations cancellation clause,” Beck said, the Legislature can cancel leases if, for instance, the state doesn’t have enough money. Whatever their length, the leases are therefore regarded as year-to-year.
For the second time in less than three years, the Cushman & Wakefield commercial real estate office in Boise has a new owner – but the Cushman & Wakefield name will remain.
Minneapolis-based Cushman & Wakefield Northmarq sold the local Cushman & Wakefield/Commerce office to Cushman & Wakefield/Pacific Commercial Realty Advisors (PACCRA) in Bakersfield, Calif., for an undisclosed amount. The new ownership went into effect Nov. 1.
The Boise office is now allied with PACCRA’s offices in Bakersfield and Fresno, Calif. The Boise office is now known as Cushman & Wakefield/Pacific Commercial Advisors – or Cushman & Wakefield for short. That’s been the name since April 1, 2012 as Cushman & Wakefield Commerce Real Estate Solutions in Salt Lake City added Boise to its Salt Lake, Seattle and Las Vegas offices.
In December 2013, Northmarq acquired Commerce and its four offices, including Boise – but the Commerce name remained tacked on to Cushman & Wakefield. The ownership for the Boise office shifted from Salt Lake City to Minneapolis at that time. Now, the owners are in Bakersfield.
Northmarq and Commerce President Jeff Eaton said in a news release that Boise strategically fits better within PACCRA than Northmarq because of similar market sizes, client mix and Bakersfield’s proximity to Boise over Minneapolis.
As a part of Northmarq, the Boise office was part of the Pohlad Companies, which owns Northmarq Capital, the Northmarq and Commerce Cushman & Wakefield companies, the Minnesota Twins baseball team, and more than 20 auto dealerships along with a movie production studio and radio station.
Cushman & Wakefield Pacific Commercial Advisors in Bakersfield is a free-standing operation owned by four local brokers, who have worked together in various iterations since the 1980s and had only one other office just a couple highway hours north in Fresno in the central California valley before adding Boise.
Peter O’Brien
“It’s a little bit more entrepreneurial in their approach,” said Peter O’Brien, the designated broker at the Cushman & Wakefield office in Boise. “I think the advantage (of being with PACCRA) is a better geographic alignment. We do have a lot of California business. There is a lot of money flying in from California.”
Coincidence, who you know and who you went to college with, came into play, directly and indirectly, for PACCRA to buy the Boise office of Cushman & Wakefield.
Vincent Roche, PACCRA’s president and co-owner, and co-owner Duane Keathley, both retail specialists, had gotten to know Boise Cushman retail specialists LeAnn Hume and Andrea Nilson in past years. Hume mentioned to Roche that Northmarq was looking to sell the Boise office.
Roche and O’Brien knew each other as students at St. Mary’s College in California and even before then, but had been out of touch since college. Roche was not aware that O’Brien was at the Boise office when Hume first mentioned Northmarq.
Vincent Roche
“We wanted to grow our company,” Roche said in an interview. “We like to go beyond our primary market.”
As part of Commerce, the Boise office worked closely with the other Commerce offices in Salt Lake City, Seattle and Las Vegas. Now, the Boise office taps directly into California, a major source of population growth for Boise as well as business relocation and expansion including Hewlett-Packard from the past and Mother Earth Brew Co. this year.
Commerce and PACCRA are both part of the Cushman & Wakefield Alliance that was launched in 2002 to expand service capabilities to independently owned commercial real estate firms. O’Brien said the Boise office will maintain its relationships with Salt Lake City, Seattle and Las Vegas.
PACCRA was the 35th firm to join the Cushman & Wakefield Alliance in 2013 and the first in California, Roche said.
Roche, Keathley, Wayne Kress and Jeff Andrew have been partners in commercial real estate since 1999 and have worked together since the 1980s under the CB Richard Ellis then CBRE banner.
PACCRA has 11 field agents in office, industrial, retain and investment in Bakersfield, seven in Fresno and 16 in Boise.
Roche started evaluating the Boise office in July or August and got clearance from Cushman & Wakefield to add the distant Boise office. Roche reached out to Northmarq and “very quickly” a deal was made.
“We went to Boise, looked at the market, and talked to people there,” Roche said. “It seemed like a really good fit. In the real estate business, there is a lot of multi-market business. We encourage agents to work with agents beyond their territory.”
Orgill Inc. will distribute hardware goods to the Pacific Northwest and western Canada from Kimball Office’s former plant in Post Falls. Photo courtesy of Orgill Inc.
Orgill Inc., a Memphis, Tenn.-based distributor of hardware goods, is converting the former Kimball Office Inc. manufacturing plant in Post Falls into a distribution center to serve the Pacific Northwest and western Canada.
Orgill acquired the 475,000-square-foot Kimball structure in September for an undisclosed amount and immediately started renovations with ambitions to start receiving product in December, Orgill spokeswoman Kristyl Lawson said.
“We’re trying to be as aggressive with the opening date as we can.” Lawson said.
She said one major renovation chore is raising the height of the sprinkler system, which was much lower for Kimball manufacturing.
Post Falls will be Orgill’s seventh distribution center to supply hardware stores on 34 routes in Washington, Oregon, Montana, Alaska and Idaho just south to Boise. Post Falls also will run 10 routes to the Canadian provinces of British Columbia, Alberta and Saskatchewan.
“Canada is a priority. Right now we are shipping out of Ontario,” Lawson said. “The western U.S. is shipping out of Hurricane, Utah.”
Orgill’s Post Falls center will be among its smaller distribution centers in square footage but among the largest in item count. Post Falls will carry 90,000 different products compared to the average 72,000 items at other Orgill facilities, she said.
Orgill distributes nearly anything carried in hardware stores except lumber to builders and independent hardware stores, she said. Orgill is not a supplier of The Home Depot or Lowe’s.
Orgill hopes to start shipping to Canada by mid-February and be fully operational in the Pacific Northwest by early spring, she said.
A four-story mixed-use buildings could replace these former bank buildings in downtown Meridian. Photo by Teya Vitu.
A developer who is familiar in downtown Meridian submitted the only proposal to redevelop a pair of former downtown bank buildings now occupied by the Treasure Valley Children’s Theater and the unBound Technology Library.
Josh Evarts, who already owns two historic downtown Meridian buildings, proposes building a pair of four-story mixed-use structures on the neighboring properties of the former Farmers & Merchants Bank and Wells Fargo Bank buildings on Main Street. They are located across the street from Meridian City Hall.
Josh Evarts
These buildings are now owned by the Meridian Development Corp., the city’s redevelopment agency, which jointly put both properties up for requests for proposals for development, purchase and/or lease with a Sept. 30 deadline for proposals.
The MDC Board of Commissioners was scheduled to meet Oct. 12 to discuss authorizing administrator Ashley Squyres to enter into negotiations with Evarts, managing member of Novembrewhisky Properties. The board will also consider a short-term extension of the children’s theater lease, which expired Sept. 30.
“It’s exactly the type of project we envision for our downtown master plan,” Squyres said. “This is the first large, private project that is likely to come to fruition since the inception of the (redevelopment) district (in 2001).”
Evarts is fluent in the language of Meridian’s downtown master plan. He sits on the Meridian Historic Preservation Commission and owns the 1902 Heritage Building and the 1905 Meridian Bank Building that he now calls The Vault. Both are on Idaho Avenue.
Evarts intends to build a pair of four-story buildings with commercial space on street level, offices on the second floor and residential on the top two floors. This is the standard definition of urban mixed-use development, a concept new to downtown Meridian.
“I don’t know if it will fly,” Evarts said. “My wife and I are going to live in one of the units. I think somebody has to take a risk. A little bit of this is us being trailblazers. Somebody has to do something different and interesting to inspire others.”
Josh Evarts proposes two four-story buildings with retail, office and residential for downtown Meridian. Image courtesy of Josh Evarts.
The first building on the children’s theater property is proposed at 3,800 square feet of retail, 4,000 square feet of office and a pair of two-story, 1,800- to 2,000-square-foot residential lofts, one of which Evarts and his wife, Lori, will occupy.
For the second building, Evarts is planning 4,000 square feet of retail, 4,000 square feet of office and four residential units of about 900 square feet each.
“It will be something that will force everybody to raise their game,” Evarts said. “I’m not a developer. I’m an IT guy. I build software.”
As such, he is taking a novel approach with dealing with the Treasure Valley Children’s Theater and unBound.
Evarts hopes to hold off working on the children’s theater building until a new location is found for the group. He said he has been working with Autumn Kersey, the theater’s founder and executive director, to write grants and find available properties in downtown Meridian.
He believes a suitable location could be found within 90 days.
“I’m not going to be the guy who displaces the children’s theater in downtown Meridian,” Evarts said. “She has a property she’s going after. If a building owner has a space with 2,000 square feet, I’d love to see a developer step up and say: ‘I’d love to be an interim solution. I think it can happen.”
Kersey opened the Treasure Valley Children’s Theater in October 2013, but she is “working aggressively to secure a permanent location in downtown Meridian.”
The Treasure Valley Children’s Theater has occupied the former Farmers & Merchants Bank building since July 2013. Photo by Teya Vitu.
“Treasure Valley Children’s Theater has always known that our residency at 703 N. Main Street would be temporary,” Kersey said in an e-mail. “We outgrew the space a couple of years ago… Josh Evarts’ proposal to develop the hard corner of Broadway and Main is exactly the type of project that downtown Meridian needs. I am grateful for his partnership in identifying the best course of action to move his project forward with as little disruption to our operations as possible.”
Evarts plans to demolish and redevelop the children’s theater property first. He does not anticipate redeveloping the unBound building for another 2½ years.
The unBound techology library opened in the former Wells Fargo building in October 2015. Photo by Teya Vitu.
unBound is the Meridian Library District’s technology library that opened in October 2015 with four 3D printers, a sound studio, design studio and print center. unBound is the district’s solution to consolidate its technology at a separate location because the library branches did not have sufficient space to permanently display the technology, Library Director Gretchen Caserotti said.
“We knew going into it that (the 713 N. Main Street property) had an uncertain future,” Caserotti said. “We have such a good relationship with Josh. We appreciate that he keeps us in the loop.”
Caserotti’s focus now is in the Nov. 8 bond election for $12 million to build two more branch libraries. After that, she will think about unBound’s future.
“We have built a lot of relationships downtown,” she said. “We feel successful in the proof of concept of what a modern library can do to expose the community to emerging technologies.”
St. Luke’s Health System is under contract to purchase all the buildings at Washington Group Plaza, which originally was built by Morrison Knudsen Corp., one of Boise’s legacy corporate giants.
St. Luke’s in June 2015 entered into a lease with an option to buy the Plaza I building, but since then Washington Group Plaza owner Second City Capital Partners of Vancouver, B.C., approached St. Luke’s to purchase all the buildings, St.
Anita Kissée
Luke’s spokeswoman Anita Kissée said.
Washington Group Plaza is comprised of the six-story, 125,568-square-foot Plaza I built in 1970; the four-story, 115,600-square-foot Plaza II built in 1975; and, added in 1982, the two-story, 138,633-square-foot Central Plaza and the seven-story, 220,045-square-foot Plaza IV, according to Ada County Assessor records.
They are located where Broadway, Myrtle Street, Front Street and Park Boulevard all converge.
“Whether St. Luke’s will proceed to purchase has not been determined,” Kissée said. “The timeline is still subject to evaluation. We are conducting due diligence and evaluating the property.”
St. Luke’s has leased space in the Plaza II building since 2013 and started moving into the Plaza I building in July 2016 after the departure of the Boise office of Los Angeles-based AECOM, an architecture, design, engineering, and construction firm.
“About 370 St. Luke’s employees are currently working or in the course of relocating to space in Plaza I and Plaza II under leases that are already in place,” Kissée said.
This includes employees in clinical training, clinical research, human resources, information technology, and operations improvement. Plaza 1 will house St. Luke’s Center for Learning and Development, an education hub and training site for St. Luke’s employees and other clinical providers.
UpCycle Studio will have 30 Stages SC3 Series bikes on three staggered rows. Photo courtesy of UpCycle Studio.
UpCycle Studio, a local indoor cycling, yoga and TRX training startup, plans to open sometime around Thanksgiving in the former Jos. A. Bank space in downtown Boise’s BoDo district.
UpCycle will showcase 30 Stages SC3 Series bikes on three staggered rows in a room that can recreate outdoor settings with video and use data generated by riders to create competitions, co-founder Allen Traylor said.
Nearly all the riding sessions involve instructors. Sessions are scheduled before work, during lunch and after work. At times, a live DJ will assemble the soundtrack.
With the great outdoors just outside the door, why an indoor studio? Traylor said the downtown setting is especially ideal for downtown workers to get a ride close to work.
“I’m an avid cyclist, mountain biking and competitive,” Traylor said. “In the winter months, I do all my training inside. When it’s 110 degrees, I go inside.”
UpCycle will also have a lounge area with three first-come, first-serve private showers and a women’s-only area with four private showers.
UpCycle Studio will have a lounge with private showers. Image courtesy of UpCycle Studio.
“We’re getting away from the gym, locker room environment,” he said.
Along with cycling, UpCycle will have a room for yoga and TRX training. The latter leverages gravity with the user’s body weight to do exercises, according to the TRX website.
Co-founders Traylor and Christine Maldonado met through mutual friend Anna Alton in November 2015. They first looked elsewhere in downtown Boise.
“We didn’t think we could afford BoDo,” Traylor said. “But it was more space and within budget.”
The 4,325-square foot, $300,000 project was designed by Matt Rhees at The Architects Office in Boise. VERTICAL Corp. of Boise is the general contractor.
Black Bear Diner commits to the North Pointe development at State Street and Gary Lane. Image courtesy of Hawkins Companies and BRS Architects.
Boise’s second Black Bear Diner will go into the North Pointe commercial and residential development that has been taking shape since June 2015 at State Street and Gary Lane.
Construction of the 5,678-square-foot Black Bear structure launches the second set of commercial buildings for North Point developer and owner Hawkins Companies. Hawkins earlier this year finished the first set of four multi-tenant commercial buildings that include tenants Smashburger, Jersey Mike’s Subs and Chipotle and the recently announced Native Grill & Wings.
The Black Bear building will be the fifth of eight planned commercial buildings for the 23.1-acre North Pointe that also includes the 29-building, 323-unit Kensington at North Pointe Apartments. The first two Kensington structures with 32 apartments are complete, as is the clubhouse, said Brandon Whallon, pre-development project manager at Hawkins.
Hawkins is in negotiations with tenants for the other three commercial buildings, said Shaun Greear, leasing director at Hawkins.
Redding, Calif.-based Black Bear Diner opened its first eatery in Mount Shasta, Calif., in 1995 and since has expanded to eight western states with 85 restaurants. It has another 16 to 20 stores planned for the next year. The first Black Bear opened in Boise in July 2012 after Black Bear first appeared outside California in Madras, Ore., in 2000, said Jairo Moncado, a Black Bear spokesman.
Black Bear opened in Chubbuck in March and expects to open in Idaho Falls in February and is in early negotiations in Twin Falls for a projected early 2018 opening, said Doug Branigan, Black Bear’s chief development officer.
Most Black Bears are franchise stores but 26 are corporate-owned, including the North Pointe and Idaho Falls locations. The Boise franchise holder at Boise Spectrum also has two Black Bears in Utah but is not looking to grow, so Black Bear decided to build its own store at North Pointe, Branigan said.
“I like North Pointe,” Branigan said. “That’s a great trade area attracting people from Meridian and north Boise. It’s getting me out of the cluster out there (in the Milwaukee Street and Fairview Road and Overland Road corridors).”
The North Point is expected to open in the third quarter of 2017, he said.
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