A big white frame will showcase the central entry to Main + Marketplace. Image courtesy of Hawkins Companies.
A large white frame will encase the mid-block entry to Main + Marketplace, the next-generation makeover of the Eighth Street retail center piece known as Capitol Terrace that was built in 1988.
Main + Marketplace will have a different look. Gone are the black-and-white tiles. The pillars will be white with vertical shop signs projecting outward.
The white frame will also slant out over the sidewalk, said Bryan Vaughn, development partner at Hawkins Companies, which bought Capital Terrace in April 2017 for an undisclosed sum less than $10 million.
Vaughn did acknowledge that $2.1 million is being spent to bring the exterior from 1988 to 2018 and another $100,000 will upgrade the common area in the middle. The new look should be in place by Sept. 30.
The remodel started toward the end of March.
Each Eighth Street corner will have a LED lighted roof-level M that can change colors.
“Ultimately, we want to make it a lively and entertaining venue,” Vaughn said. “We want to make it an experience, a meeting place.”
Hawkins, which is headquartered a few blocks away at BoDo, recently added aluminum composite horizontal awnings above the upper level that also project over the sidewalk.
Main + Marketplace is the default downtown retail center with 16 tenants, the most large-scale retail setting in Boise’s city center. The center provides the retail balance to the restaurant-heavy offerings on the rest of Eighth Street.
Main + Marketplace will have vertical shop signs on the pillars and a lighted M that changes colors at the corner. Image courtesy of Hawkins Companies.
“This is the sort of environment where you can have a strong mix of tenants,” Vaughn said. “From our viewpoint, retail is needed.”
Main + Marketplace sits alongside one leg of the Capital City Public Market.
“You want something that is a welcoming design and an update design but one that is also bold, that showcases that this is a dynamic downtown,” said Lynn Hightower, executive director of the Downtown Boise Alliance. “What I think is certainly as impressive is this is a local developer.”
Concurrent to the Hawkins renovations, at least two tenants are doing makeovers of their own. The owners of Pita Pit have rebranded as Jeckyll & Hyde, a lunch spot and late-night venue, and the Jamba Juice owners have switched over to Brü, a self-pour pub.
“We’d love for everybody to update,” said Beau Manwaring, senior leasing manager at Hawkins.
CTA Group is the architect and Guho Corp. is the general contractor.
Ownership was a long time coming for Hawkins Companies owner and CEO, Gary Hawkins. Capitol Terrace was built by Burley clothing store chain owner Jim Roper in 1988 and the building stayed in Roper family ownership until Hawkings bought it. Hawkins, however, was involved early on in leasing tenants for Capitol Terrace.
“He called it Main and Main,” Vaughn said. “It’s hard to argue it’s not the center of downtown.”
Hawkins might Main + Marketplace upward, but there is no immediate time frame.
“The building itself can go eight floors more,” Vaughn noted. “The Ropers designed it as a future tower.”
The first two retail buildings are complete at the Bridges at Lakemoor in Eagle. Photo courtesy of Hawkins Companies.
The Bridges at Lakemoor, ostensibly a planned retail-heavy center, started construction in 2016 with the new corporate headquarters for the swiftly growing tech start-up TSheets.
The first two retail buildings, each 11,000 square feet along a pond and Eagle Road, arose in the past year with two tenants open now, his-and-hers fitness studios F45 and Barre3. Eugene-based Café Yumm! will open its first eatery outside its 22 in Oregon and Washington at Lakemoor toward the end of the year.
The buildings stand next to each other, end to end, with a joint patio capped with the frame of a stylized barn roof.
The three buildings stand alone now on 25.5 acres in Eagle, north of Chinden Boulevard, but Boise developer Hawkins Companies has elaborate plans for Lakemoor that eventually involve 11 structures, including the first movie theater complex for Eagle.
Next in line for construction is an 11-screen Luxe Reel Theatre, the second Luxe brand that local theater chain The Reel Theatres is building after the Luxe Reel opened June 8 in Caldwell. Later this year, the Ontario Reel will be converted to Luxe.
The 28,301-square-foot Luxe Reel Theatre 11 in Eagle will be the first with all recliner seating for Casper Management, which owns the Boise-based six theater Reel Theatres chain. Caldwell has a mix of luxury rockers and recliners.
Bridges at Lakemoor evokes a modern farmhouse feel in its design. Photo by Teya Vitu.
Casper will be the first movie theater operator in Eagle. The company was drawn to the mixed-use Lakemoor project.
“We like the mix with the office space,” said Eldon Sorensen, Casper’s business manager. “That creates some synergy for parking. The office hours are the opposite of the movie theater.”
The target opening for Luxe Reel is November 2019.
Casper owns six Reel Theatres – three screening first-run movies in Caldwell, Ontario and Anderson, California, and three screening second-run movies in Boise and Nampa. The theaters have a combined 48 screens.
Eagle-based time tracking software producer TSheets moved into the newly built, three-story 65,000-square-foot office at Lakemoor in May 2017. Hawkins plans to build a second identical office building next to the movie theater at the south end of the property, said Hawkins senior development director Paul Stephens.
The property still has four pads available, three at the north end of the property at 12,500, 7,050 and 5,224 square feet and a 4,219-square-foot pad at the southwest corner at one of Lakemoor’s three bridges.
BRS Architects was the architect for the $14.5 million TSheets building and Hawkins is designing the retail buildings in-house. Radix was the general contractor for TSheets and PETRA is the general contractor for the $9 million first pair of retail buildings.
Stephens estimates 600 to 700 people will be working at center’s businesses when Lakemoor is built out. The second office should start construction in spring and open in spring 2020.
Fast-growing tech startup TSheest, Barre3 and F45 are the first three tenants at the Bridges at Lakemoor in Eagle. Photo by Teya Vitu.
At the property’s northwest corner, Beau Manwaring, senior leasing manager at Hawkins, hopes to land an organic grocer for the 12,500-square-foot structure, the largest proposed retail building at Lakemoor.
The idea is for Bridges at Lakemoor to be walkable.
“We have a large amount of pedestrian (walkways) that are stamped and colored,” Stephens said.
Hawkins chose a “modern farmhouse” architectural design with an A-frame roof, wood beams, a metal seam roof and the signature framed barn over the patio. The buildings have flat and peaked brick facades and cement fiber siding with the appearance of wood.
Lakemoor has two long lagoons between Eagle Road and five retail sites. A round pond sits outside TSheets and two other retail sites.
Hawkins avoided big boxes; the longest building is 177 feet long.
“We’re trying to have each tenant create their own experience,” Stephens said.
Love it or hate it, much of the iconic black-and-white tile of the Capitol Terrace will be going away as the building façade undergoes a $2 million renovation this summer. The 1988 building will be rebranded Main + Marketplace.
In addition to a refresh of the façade that includes repainting and new tile, the renovation will also include installation of street-level and second-story permanent steel-and-wood canopies outside storefronts and the open-air deck, as well as signs and a “prominent architectural feature” facing 8th Street. The parking garage will also be repainted, said Gary Hawkins, owner and CEO of Hawkins Companies, the new owner of the building, who called it a “prime corner of Boise.”
The renovation’s second phase will include this area and could include pop-up shops. Photo by Sharon Fisher.
A second phase of the renovation — for the entryway off the garage, which could include a “container alley” of pop-up shops in shipping containers — will be starting at the same time with an undetermined completion date, Hawkins said.
Several tenants will also be renovating, such as The Balcony dance club, while the Title 9 women’s clothing store and The Electric Chair Salon have already completed renovations, Hawkins said. While many existing tenants, such as Shige Japanese Cuisine, were represented in the artist’s rendering of the building, they might not all be staying, he said. He declined to name any who might be leaving. “It’s a vibrant, diverse mix that keeps downtown Boise cool,” said Lynn Hightower, executive director of the Downtown Boise Association.
The building will also be getting several new tenants, some as soon as mid-May, such as Donut Daze, a chicken, doughnut, and waffle house that will stay open late; Bru, a pizza and self-serve beer facility run by the owners of the former Jamba Juice; and Jekyll and Hyde, a bagel shop that also features live music at night, which will replace Pita Pit and will be run by the same person, Nick Epler. “The decision to reinvent was a no-brainer,” he said.
Boise mayor Dave Bieter ceremoniously pried off one of the building’s iconic black-and-white tiles. Photo by Sharon Fisher.
The renovation has actually been planned since 2017, as part of Hawkins’ acquisition of the building, said Gena Russell, vice president and senior relationship manager of the commercial real estate division of U.S. Bank. The bank has funded a number of Hawkins projects nationwide, including the Edwards Boise Stadium 21. The bank was notified that its request for proposal for financing was accepted on March 9, 2017, under terms she said she could not disclose. The acquisition, which Hawkins said was somewhat less than $10 million, was from the Roper family, the original owner and developer of the building
Tenants of the building were generally positive. “We’re delighted to have investment in the building we’re located in,” said Laura DeLaney, a co-owner of Rediscovered Books, who said the business planned to stay in the building. The bookstore expanded and renovated in 2015 and so doesn’t expect to do any other renovations, as it is focusing on renovating its new second location at the former Rainbow Books, she said.
The signature but dated, vaguely Art Deco-ish tile came in for its share of ribbing during the announcement, which included Boise Mayor Dave Bieter ceremoniously prying one of the black tiles off near the top of the escalator. The black-and-white tile served as a helpful reminder for people leaving bars at 2 am that they might need to get a ride home, he said.
Fans of the black-and-white tiles need not despair, however. At the request of some of the second-floor tenants, which he didn’t name, some of the squares on that level may be preserved, Hawkins said.
The original building was built in 1988 by Jim Roper of Burley as a redevelopment project anchored by two parking garages.
The designer is CTA Architects, in Boise, and construction will be managed by Guho Corp. Construction began April 25 and is scheduled to be completed by the end of August.
West Elm opened a store in Boise after a store representative had a coffee meeting in Las Vegas with a Boise broker. Photo by Teya Vitu.
Whatever happens in Las Vegas does not stay in Las Vegas after tens of thousands of retail players disperse from the annual International Council of Shopping Center’s RECon Global Retail Real Estate Convention.
Ben Zamzow
Some of what happens at ICSC RECon ends up lining the major streets of the Treasure Valley in the coming months and years.
“We finalized West Elm (for downtown Boise) at a coffee meeting at Bellagio,” said Ben Zamzow, vice president of real estate development at Rocky Mountain Cos. in Boise and nine-time attendee of RECon.
Boise sends dozens of commercial real estate agents and brokers, developers, property owners and managers to Las Vegas for a few days each May to mix it up with 37,000 retail-oriented people from 58 countries at the world’s largest annual retail conference. RECon works like speed-dating with meetings typically in 30-minute blocks.
Hawkins Companies has a large booth at the annual International Council of Shopping Center’s RECon Global Retail Real Estate Convention in Las Vegas. Photo courtesy of Hawkins Companies.
“Everything leads up to Las Vegas,” said Shaun Greear, leasing director at Hawkins Companies in Boise. “You’re coming out of Las Vegas with your leads that you spend the rest of summer and fall trying to make something out of what happened in Las Vegas.”
The world of retail real estate relies more on relationships than does industrial and office real estate, said Michael Ballantyne, managing partner at Thornton Oliver Keller Commercial Real Estate in Bose.
“ICSC is a place to renew relationships: ‘I know I haven’t seen you in 10 years but I want to check in with you,’” said Ballantyne, a 15-year veteran of ICSC RECon.
ICSC RECon is where Boise brokers take their elevator speeches to woo retailers who don’t quite measure Boise at the same level as Salt Lake City, Portland or Seattle. Thornton Oliver Keller took nine people to Las Vegas, and Hawkins nearly cleared its Boise office with 14 people heading to southern Nevada.
Thornton Oliver Keller took nine people to the world’s largest retail conference in Las Vegas. Photo courtesy of Thornton Oliver Keller.
Retail scouts initially evaluate markets by the metropolitan statistical area population count, which for Boise MSA was 691,000 in 2016, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. What retailers may overlook is Boise’s retail reach exceeds the MSA counties of Ada, Canyon, Boise, Owyhee, and Gem.
“We hit way above our batting average,” Ballantyne said. “Our draw is from La Grande, northern Nevada, the Wood River Valley and north central Idaho. People hear about Boise, know about Boise but they don’t understand the dynamic of Boise.”
These surrounding regions bring the Boise retail market to 1 million.
“Boise used to be a one-store market,” Ballantyne said. “Now they are opening second and third stores. You sit down with them and roll out a map. You talk about what the competition are doing. They realize the market is large enough for a second store.”
The ICSC RECon convention is more than retailers and brokers. Developers, builders, city officials, investors, tech people, commercial decorators that do holiday décor for shopping centers … all take part in speed dating at RECon.
The Village at Meridian and its developer and owner CenterCal Properties of El Segundo, Calif., play Las Vegas from several angles: recruiting retailers and finding new places to build shopping centers.
Ramona Merrill (right) goes to the ICSC retail convention in Las Vegas to find tenants that fit the standards for the Village at Meridian. Photo courtesy of CenterCal Properties.
“We had city councils coming by wanting us to build a Village. They solicit us,” said Ramona Merrill, CenterCal’s vice president of marketing in the Intermountain region.
The Village is more selective about recruiting retailers.
“You have those that want to be here but they are not the right brand for our product,” Merrill said. “We look for the best in class for everything, the best you can get for the market.”
Hawkins owns several retail centers, including the recently acquired Capitol Terrace, North Point, and nearly 30 acres near Interstate 84 and Meridian Road. Hawkins had 128 pre-scheduled appointments at ICSC, and attended another 30 or 40 during the event.
“We had meetings for each and every site we own,” Greear said. “Ninety-nine percent of the time we talk on the phone and send emails. That’s what’s great about Las Vegas. You can get face-to-face. I’m old school. It’s the best way to build a relationship. You shake hands and look at each other, eye to eye.”
Andrea Nilson
Three retail experts from Cushman & Wakefield Pacific in Boise journeyed to ICSC. It was the 16th pilgrimage to the retail confab for Andrea Nilson, senior director-retail specialist.
“If you want to be prolific in retail real estate, you have got to be there or you are not relevant in today’s market,” Nilson said. “All of our clients are there. We have to be there.”
Nilson has watched the view of Boise evolve at ICSC RECon, boosted by repeat listings in magazine “best of” lists.
“They are approaching us and saying they want to be in Boise now,” she said. “They didn’t want to be here before.”
Not all brokers run the ICSC rat race
Northwest Commercial Advisors broker Jeffrey Hall in Eagle plays Las Vegas differently from his brethren. He started going to the ICSC conference in 2010 but has dropped out of that “rat race” for the past two years to do his networking at ICSC’s peripheries.
Jeffrey Hall
“I’ll meet up with my clients at a nice restaurant,” said Hall, who represents Jack in the Box in nine states. “I’ll meet somebody for breakfast, lunch, dinner, drinks. Generally, I meet with five or six people a day. That’s how I do it.”
Hall is in Las Vegas for relationship building more than recruiting retailers. His first ICSC RECon was his jackpot.
Back then, Hall picked up the business card for the Jack in the Box representative for Idaho who was not at his booth. Hall called and was told Jack in the Box had a broker in Idaho.
“He told me ‘If you want, I’ll give you five minutes at the airport when I come in (to Boise),’” Hall recalled. “An hour and a half later, he asked me to be his broker in Idaho. That is my biggest success story from ICSC.”
Las Vegas retail conference helps build Idaho Falls retail scene
If Boise is the most isolated big city in the Lower 48, Idaho Falls is even that much farther off the national retail map.
Yet Idaho Falls/Ammon has built a retail scene, anchored along Hitt Road/25th Street with the Grand Teton Mall and the two-year-old Sandcreek Commons with Hobby Lobby. The wooing for Hobby Lobby started a few years ago in Las Vegas at the world’s largest retail conference – the International Council of Shopping Center’s RECon Global Retail Real Estate Convention.
Brent Wilson
“I met Hobby Lobby Vice President Scott Nelson at ICSC,” said Brent Wilson, the Idaho Falls broker for Boise-based Thornton Oliver Keller Commercial Real Estate. “Within two years, they opened a store at Sandcreek Commons. I would say ICSC is a critical component. That’s where you make deals.”
Wilson said Thornton Oliver Keller represents about 60 percent of commercial real estate in Idaho Falls. He estimates 30 percent of his deals are somehow connected to three May days in Las Vegas for ICSC, where he has found himself 12 times.
“They don’t need us to negotiate real estate deals,” Wilson said. “They need us for market intelligence. They are not from the area. They don’t understand traffic patterns or pending annexations.”
Retailers work off national metrics that don’t tell the whole story. The story they see from 35,000 feet is a metro area with 130,000 people. Wilson convinces them Idaho Falls has a retail area with 260,000 people covering 10 eastern Idaho counties and spilling into Wyoming and Montana.
“Getting face time with decision makers is critical,” Wilson said.
Wilson gets typical responses to his spiel at ICSC.
“The reaction we get, first, is ‘you’re too small. You’re not part of our growth strategy,’” Wilson said. “Second: ‘Yes, we’re coming. We’re going to do these cities first (Twin Falls, Pocatello, Salt Lake City), then do Idaho Falls.’ Third: ‘Yes, we’re coming. Send us sites. Tell us when we should open and why.’”
Wilson scheduled 22 meetings for ICSC and had 10 impromptu meetings. Typically, it takes anywhere from three months to two years for these meetings to play out on the streets of Idaho Falls.
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.
Dunkley Music moved out of its home August 7 to make way for a Residence Inn hotel. Dunkley’s is moving to a new store on Eagle Road. Photo by Teya Vitu.
Three new hotels could be under construction in downtown Boise by the end of the year.
So far, the proposed Residence Inn by Marriott destined for the Dunkley Music property in downtown Boise is the farthest along among four proposed hotel projects. On August 7, there were moving trucks outside Dunkley as the owners of the business prepared to empty the building.
Jared S. Smith, who is developing the Residence Inn, filed for a footings and foundations permit July 31 with Boise Planning and Development Services. The permit could be issued in four to six weeks, said Sarah Schafer, the city’s design review manager.
Filing for a footings and foundations permit is the first in the city’s three-step building permit process. Smith will also have to get a shell and core permit, and interiors permits. Some developers file for all three at the same time and some do it individually. Doing it individually can enable the the footings and foundations permit to be issued more quickly, Schafer said.
Smith closed Aug. 7 on the acquisition of the Dunkley and neighboring Winther properties, where he plans to build a 10-story, 186-room Residence Inn by Marriott on Capitol Boulevard between Broad and Myrtle Streets. He didn’t disclose what he paid for the parcels.
“We’re still hoping for this fall (to start construction),” said Smith, principal at Pennbridge Lodging, an Eagle-based hotel development and operating firm. “That’s the goal.”
Smith said asbestos remediation work will need to come first with the Dunkley’s building, which he hopes to demolish in about four weeks. Demolition permits are issued on a “walk-in” basis, Schafer said.
Inn at 500 Capitol could start construction as soon as late September. Image courtesy of CSHQA.
Three other hotels are in the works for downtown Boise. The Inn at 500 Capitol and Hyatt Place have gone through the city design review process but the owners haven’t submitted building permit applications.
The Inn at 500 team expects to apply for its footings and foundation permit in the next two weeks, said Brian Obie, president of Eugene, Ore.,-based Obie Development Partners, which is proposing the Inn at 500 Capitol at Capitol and Myrtle, across from Smith’s Residence Inn.
“It sounds like we’ll be in lock-step with the folks across the street,” Obie said. “We expect to break ground the last week of September or early October. We hope to have the podium – the first floor – built before snow falls.”
Obie has brought the height of Inn at 500 Capitol down from seven floors to six floors but has slightly increased the room count from 107 to 113. The luxury hotel will have balconies for every room and a 4,000-square-foot banquet facility for 100 people with a 3,000-square-foot outdoor veranda, Obie said.
The hotel is part of a partnership with Hawkins Companies, which owns the property where Inn at 500 will be built.
Provo, Utah,-based PEG Development is in the design phase for its five-story, 150-room Hyatt Place, which is proposed for the Boise Plaza parking lot downtown that is bounded by Bannock, 10th, 11th and Jefferson streets. The hotel also will have about 3,000 square feet of meeting space, said Robert Schmidt, vice president at PEG. Construction is expected to take 12 to 14 months.
“We anticipate breaking ground this year still,” said Schmidt, who expects to apply for a building permit in November.
The construction of the Hyatt Place is a partnership with Boise-based Rafanelli & Nahas, which owns the Boise Plaza and parking lot and intends to be majority owner of the hotel.
Hyatt Place construction could start by year’s end. Image from the Boise Planning & Development Services website.
Gardner Co. has not submitted any applications yet at Planning and Development Services for its hotel proposal on Parcel B, the 5.02-acre dirt parking lot bounded by Front and Myrtle streets and 11th and 13th streets.
The Gardner Company is not revealing any new details before presenting its updates to the Greater Boise Auditorium District Board of Directors on Aug. 20.
“All will be revealed in time,” Gardner Executive Vice President David Wali said.
Wali did acknowledge that Gardner now plans to build two hotels on Parcel B, the 5.02-acre dirt parking lot that GBAD owns between the parcels. Gardner is negotiating with Embassy Suites by Hilton for an 11-story, 200-room hotel at Front and 11th.
Gardner initially had proposed an apartment building for Myrtle and 11th but now wants to build a second hotel at Myrtle and 11th. Wali said the additional hotel would help meet the desires of GBAD Executive Director Pat Rice, who has said the Boise Centre, which he also directs, needs a full-service hotel with 400 or so rooms.
Wali said he’s not concerned if Gardner is first to start construction or not. Gardner would have no demolition work to do as Parcel B is an empty dirt lot.
“We want to make sure we have the right product,” Wali said.
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