Tag: Meridian Development Corp.

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.

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.”

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.”

“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.

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.”