The Salvation Army has sold its Booth Marian Pritchett School property. Photo courtesy of the Salvation Army.
The Salvation Army’s sale of its 1928 Booth Marian Pritchett School property on the North End closed on Sept. 28 for $2 million after a prolonged approval process, the Salvation Army reported.
Even under new ownership, the Salvation Army’s School for Pregnant and Parenting Teens will remain at the historic location until the new school under construction on Emerald Street is completed, scheduled for the fall 2019 school year, said Major Robert Lloyd, the Salvation Army Boise Corps officer.
“We’re staying right where we are until the new building is ready,” Lloyd said.
The sale had been initially reported in May, but Lloyd said that was a premature announcement as the local Salvation Army still needed approval from the Salvation Army Western Territory in Portland and Salvation Army corporate office.
The buyers are a partnership that includes Ron McDonough, president of McDonough Real Estate Group at Silvercreek Realty of Boise; George Cooper, owner of Westminster Homes of Eagle; and Browne Management Services LLC. Each have one-third ownership, McDonough said.
“Because of the location and continuing growth and demand on the North End, we determined we wanted to buy it and put in an offer,” said McDonough, who grew up a block away from Booth and now lives nearby in a different house.
The group does not have a name for their project, but a new name will likely incorporate Booth, he said.
The plan is to convert the larger hospital/school building into three condos and the chapel into two townhomes. Cooper plans to build nine single-family homes measuring 2,500 to 3,800 square feet elsewhere on the 1.86-acre property.
“I’m optimistic we have come up with a really nice plan,” Cooper said.
The condo conversion will start first, as soon as the Salvation Army moves out, with the first residents scheduled to move in six months later, sometime in 2020, Cooper said.
Sale prices for any iteration of housing have not been determined, and reservations will not open for another six to eight months, but McDonough said he has already fielded interest from a couple prospective buyers.
The Salvation Army owned the property at 1617 N 24th St. since 1921, building the Booth Memorial Hospital in 1928, which eventually became Marian Pritchett School.
The Salvation Army is building a new school for pregnant and parenting teens on Emerald Street. Image courtesy of the Salvation Army.
“I feel like I just sold my grandpa’s old Ford pickup truck,” Lloyd said.
The sale of the historic property funds, in part, the new, $11.5 million two-story, 50,000-square-foot school for pregnant and parenting teens that the Salvation Army is building at Emerald Street and Mark Stall Place, next to Horizon Elementary School and across from the Boise City Hall West complex. Fundraising and sale of another property at 11th and Bannock streets covered the balance, Lloyd said.
Construction started in the spring. So far, the four tilt-up concrete walls have been placed for the chapel, and the gymnasium floor has been poured, with work now focused on the elevator shaft, Lloyd said.
erstad ARCHITECTS of Boise is the architect. Jordan-Wilcomb Construction of Boise is the general contractor.
An artist’s rendering of two townhomes in one building at the new Fairways at Whitetail Club development in McCall. Image courtesy of the Whitetail Club.
The Whitetail Club private community in McCall has been spending the last couple years diversifying beyond the $2-million custom homes that established the 1,300-acre enclave in 2004.
First came cabins, then cottages, and now Whitetail is adding 34 townhomes along the 12th and 13th fairways of its golf course.
“Buyers wanted a turn-key solution,” said Dan Scott, president and general manager at Whitetail Club.
Whitetail has sold 105 of 238 estate lots for custom homes, where 57 custom homes have been built in 14 years.
Unlike custom homes, where each owner starts with an architect from scratch and builds the home, Whitetail Club offers a variety of designs and options with the cabins, cottages and townhomes that it builds.
Those three products emerged from Whitetail’s residential real estate master plan three years ago, Scott said.
Buyers quickly warmed up to the cabins and cottages with the 15 cabins all selling out, and 16 of 23 cottages sold or under contract since going on the market in November 2017. The cottages feature one, two or three bedrooms and 1,400 to 2,500 square feet, costing $689,000 to $889,000. Cabins with four bedrooms and 3,200 square feet cost $995,000 to $1.159 million.
The new phase of Fairways at Whitetail Club townhomes are not the urban shoebox townhomes lined up side by side. The three-bedroom, 3½-bath townhomes, for which construction is expected to start in April, will come two to a building, creating a look like one big house.
“It’s a really cool design concept,” Scott said. “Most are not a mirror image of each other. (Each townhome) has a different pitch, different gable, and the garage doors are rotated. You end up with a product that looks very different from your neighbor. We call them semi-customized.”
The Fairways at Whitetail Club will range from $1.235 million to about $1.8 million.
The 34 townhomes in 17 buildings come in two models, with buyer options for the roof and finishes. One model has the option of a basement with two additional bedrooms, bathroom, family lounge, wet bar and bunkroom.
“We’re going to spec build one building,” Scott said. “We’re building (the others) once we have a buyer.”
The architect and general contractor is Resort Concepts of Edwards, Colorado, which also designed and built the Whitetail cottages.
Whitetail Club invested about $2 million to build roads and bring utilities to the Fairways at Whitetail Club project. These are the first homes Whitetail is building along the golf course, though some custom homes line other fairways.
Seventeen townhomes are proposed for a vacant lot at the Kootenai Street rail crossing. Image courtesy of Pivot North Architecture.
Seventeen townhomes could be wedged between Kootenai Street and a curve of unused rail spur near the east edge of the Boise Bench.
The Marietta Subdivision, as the project is now known, would be on a .89-acre triangular parcel that may not have had any prior development, said Ben Semple, partner at Rodney Evans + Partners, the land planning and landscape architecture firm for the project.
The rail spur dead-ends near Vista Village, and the project is also near the Union Pacific Railroad track, where Boise Valley Railroad runs one train in each direction on weekdays.
Developer Kevin Cablik of CK Property Group LLC was drawn to the overlooked vacant site within a few blocks of Boise State University.
“At this point, what interests Kevin is there is obviously a housing shortage,” Semple said. “A lot of people want to live close to downtown. Kevin is looking for places to do infill development.”
The townhomes will be in six structures with three units in each structure, except one with two units. Three structures will be along Kootenai, and the other three about 50 feet from the rail spur with views of the Boise Foothills, Table Rock and downtown.
The two-bedroom units will have an extra room that could be an office or small third bedroom. The townhomes will have roof decks and either a two-car or large one-car garage.
They will measure about 1,800 to 2,000 square feet, but pricing has not been determined, Semple said.
Semple said the hope is to start construction in spring 2019. Pivot North Architecture of Boise is the architect.
Cablik is in the process of seeking a conditional-use permit and a variance to reduce the setback from the rear property line from 20 to seven feet.
The property was owned for more than 50 years by the Day family, mostly Robert L. Day, mayor of Boise from 1959 to 1961, and then his wife, Charlotte L. Day. Since 2005, it had been owned by Day Side LP, until it was sold to CK Property Group LLC for the proposed townhome development. The Day family built nearby Vista Village in 1949.
Half the homes at the new Eagle Lake subdivision in McCall will sit along a pond. Photo courtesy of Pat Hill.
The first set of five home lots is ready for developers at the Eagle Lake subdivision a couple blocks south of Shore Lodge in McCall.
By fall, Eagle Lake will have eight lots, four with waterfronts on a small pond, developer Pat Hill said.
Hill, also broker at Premier Realty in McCall, said most lots are one-third to one-half acre with a few 1.7-acre estate lots. Lot prices range from $199,000 to $285,000.
Hill acquired the 7.9 acres three years ago when it was still the never-developed Rio Vista Subdivision 6. The first five subdivisions were built in the 1980.
“I model my subdivision on the single-family home with condo convenience concept,” Hill said.
Hill built a private load to Eagle Lake with an annual fee of $200 for homeowners.
The Fifth and Idaho Apartments will have one- and two-bedroom units. Photo by Teya Vitu.
The market-rate, 81-unit Fifth and Idaho Apartments in downtown Boise are on schedule to open about October, the developer said.
Construction at Fifth and Idaho streets started in late June and the work is now in the structural framing stage, said Dean Papé, co-developer along with Peter Oliver.
“I don’t have (rental) rates yet,” Papé said. “We’re watching the market.”
The developers and co-owners Clay Carley and Tim Gibson plan to rename Fifth and Idaho, with the new name to be announced in the next 60 to 90 days, Papé said.
The $18 million project has three sizes of one-bedroom units: eight at 750 square feet, 32 at 665 square feet and 20 at 560 square feet; 15 two-bedroom units at about 1,000 square feet; and six ground-level two-bedroom townhomes at about 1,100 square feet, he said.
Fifth and Idaho will also have a 3,000-square-foot retail space with developers actively negotiating with a number of potential tenants.
ESI Construction of Meridian is the general contractor and Hummel Architects of Boise partnered with GGLO of Seattle as the architects.
The first set of 41 townhomes at Parkway Station in Garden City should be complete by the end of March. Photo courtesy of Urban Concepts.
The first 41 townhomes of the 80-home Parkway Station mixed-use development are due to be finished by the end of May in Garden City just off Veterans Parkway.
Parkway Station, centered at Adams and 42nd Street, will also have 45,000 square feet of commercial/office and 6,000 square feet of multi-family housing in the 10-acre project, said Bryan Forrester, president of Urban Concepts, a division of Keller Willams Realty Boise.
Project developer RADIX Construction of Nampa chose not to market the homes or take reservations until the March 24 grand opening. The homes are priced from $320,000 to $360,000, said Forrester, the sales and marketing director on the residential side.
Thirty-two homes will have three bedrooms, three bathrooms and two-car garages. Nine 1,400-square-foot, two-bedroom cottages are also available.
The first phase of townhomes will come in two eight-plex structures and four four-plexes.
Forrester said site work has started on the second set of 39 townhomes, which are expected to be complete in 2019.
The 10-acre project is being developed on what was a mostly vacant mobile home park.
The architect is Hutchison Smith Architects of Boise. RADIX is the general contractor.
Parkway Station wraps around the Boys & Girls Club of Ada County, the pending Future Public School charter school and Riverfront Park and is close to the Boise River Greenbelt. The existing Anser Public Charter School, Grazmick Produce and Wildflour Bakery are also nearby.
“The Parkway developments are exactly in line with the community’s vision for this area,” said Jena Thornborrow, Garden City’s development services director. “The existing neighborhood already includes some great amenities. Once the Parkway developments are completed, the Adams and 42nd Street area will be a Garden City hub infused with a strong sense of place.”
Garden City presently has 233 single-family/live-work lots and five lots with 96 apartments in 11 developments in various stages of development.
The ground is being cleared at 42nd and Veterans Parkway for a 45,000-square-foot commercial building that will likely be four stories and will also include 6,000 square feet of apartments above street-level retail, Forrester said.
Separately, at 42nd and Adams, “a successful, local company is opening a second coffee shop” in two shipping containers with drive-up and sit-down service. An e-bike shop is planned next door to the café, he said.
The commercial components are expected to be completed in fall.
“We’re looking at adding to the assets that Garden City is building up in the arts and culinary and environmental,” Forrester said. “This project will provide market-rate housing with a café and potential farmers market all just steps away.”
Current Garden City housing developments include:
Flourish, 45th and Adams streets: 20 buildable residential lots
The Afton’s second condo building will be built to the inhabited first The Afton in downtown Boise. Image courtesy of Michael Hormaechea.
With the fully occupied 29-unit The Afton condominiums settled in at River and Eighth streets in downtown Boise, construction started at the start of March on the second phase of The Afton.
The five-story, 35-unit second Afton building will offer 22 two-bedroom units, 11 one-bedroom and two three-bedroom condos at River and Ninth streets with completion expected in fall 2019, developer Michael Hormaechea said.
The two-bedroom condos range from 1,235 to 2,071 square feet and the one-bedrooms from 722 to 1,099 square feet. The three-bedroom condos are 1,823 square feet.
Foundation work for the second phase of The Afton started in early March. Photo by Teya Vitu.
Reservation are now open, but Hormaechea has not released sale prices. The first phase was sold out before the June 2017 completion.
“So far we are very pleased for the demand for The Afton,” Hormaechea said. “I’m hearing tenants love the location, that it’s convenient enough for them to walk anywhere. They have proximity to the Greenbelt, parks, museums.”
Julie Oliver and Liz O’Gara of Keller Williams Realty Boise are the sales team.
Hormaechea said he may consider more downtown housing projects.
“I really enjoy urban infill development and will look to do some more down the road,” he said.
A chicken visits the Waterview Estates No. 2 housing development in Marsing. Photo by Teya Vitu.
Four homes are under construction at Waterview Estates Subdivision No. 2, a new development along Bruneau Highway just outside Marsing.
Property owner Lamon Loucks is developing 24 acres along the Snake River on the Owyhee County side. When it’s finished, it will have 21 high-end homes, each on just over an acre. The four-bedroom houses will measure 2,000 to 2,800 square feet, and will be priced from $350,000 to $430,000.
“On one acre you can have a horse, you can have a calf, there’s access to the river,” Loucks said. “It’s convenient. You’re only 20 minutes form Costco.”
Loucks is finding interest from longtime Boise and Meridian residents whose former countryside homes are now part of suburban developments. He was hoping to build spec homea and sell them, but so far he’s hearing from buyers as soon as he starts construction. He thinks he’ll have buyers for all 21 homes by summer.
“What I found out is this: 2,000 square feet on one acre is the American dream thing that people want,” said Louks, owner of Loucks Homes. “The people want to come out here but there’s nothing to buy.”
In Marsing proper, population 1,200, Loucks wants to build a 260-home Meadowbrook development but has received city approval for only 30 homes with a requirement to build a road to the highway. That highway requirement has stalled the project, he said.
On the Sunny Slope side of the Snake River, Loucks expects to start construction in April on a pair of developments near Riverside and Karcher roads with 31 and 24 homes, also on one-acre lots. The homes will have three or four bedrooms, and will be priced at $350,000 to $425,000.
Scot Ludwig proposes to build two towers linked with a garage over Broad Street. Image courtesy of Hummel Architects.
Boise City Council member Scot Ludwig plans to put an exclamation point on recent Broad Street improvements with linked 11- and nine-story towers that would span the road.
The city has in recent months added pedestrian-friendly, event-friendly and environmentally friendly features to five blocks of the street, and developer Mike Brown is putting the finishing touches on a 159-unit mixed-use apartment project called the Fowler there as well.
Ludwig on Dec. 22 expects to submit plans to the city Design Review Committee to build 11- and nine-story towers on either side of Broad Street. A two-story garage will link the buildings 44 feet above street level.
Greg Allen, a principal at Hummel Architects in Boise, is the project architect. McAlvain Construction of Boise is the general contractor.
Greg Allen
The project would be located at Fifth Street, across from The Fowler. The Wylder pizza restaurant opened Oc.t 19 at The Fowler and the Form & Function coffee shop is expected to open Dec. 16 at The Fowler, with the apartments slated for completion in February.
Ludwig is recruiting Zou 75, an Asian fusion restaurant in Hailey, to open a second location across from The Wylder in the 3,300-square-foot retail space at street level in the proposed nine-story office tower. That tower will be built on a parking lot at the southeast corner of Broad and Fifth streets that Ludwig bought eight years ago.
An 11-story condo tower is proposed for the parking lot of the Idaho Independent Bank building. Ludwig, through his Broad Street Properties LLC, is 50 percent owner of the lot, with the bank owning 34 percent.
“Our deal is still being struck,” Ludwig said of negotiations with the bank to develop the parking lot.
Scot Ludwig
Ludwig said his offer includes replacing the 61-space bank building parking lot with 61 spaces, plus 15 visitor spaces in the 300-space private parking garage he is incorporating into the towers. He added that another 130 garage spaces would be available to Idaho Independent Bank building tenants.
“This is a completely private garage – no public funding,” said Ludwig. He sits on the Capital City Development Corp. Board of Commissioners, which has entered into a number of public/private parking garage partnerships. “We’re taking two surface parking lots out of the system. Density is environmentally sound. It’s an infill project.”
Public parking, however, will be available between 6 p.m. and 7 a.m., Ludwig added.
Idaho Independent Bank President Kurt Gustavel has watched The Fowler and Residence Inn hotel rise up over the past two years as well as new streets, sidewalks and trees installed at ground level between Capitol Boulevard and Second Street.
Eleven- and nine-story towers are proposed for these parking lots in front of and across from the Idaho Independent Bank building (rear right). Photo by Teya Vitu.
“We’re supportive,” Gustavel said. “A lot of good things are going on in this neighborhood. As part of the neighborhood, (Ludwig’s towers) can be really complementary if we all work together to make sure it works as a positive for the neighborhood.”
The $30 million project could start construction in late summer with envisioned completion in 2019.
“Our goal is to have an out-of-state company come to Boise and create jobs and live across the street,” Ludwig said. “I don’t want a tenant to just shift space (from another downtown Boise building). This is being built for an out-of-state tenant that pays higher wages. We’ve talked to one potential tenant who would take the entire 45,000 square feet of office.”
Mixed-use towers
The 11-story condo tower would have two-story live/work units at street level with the two-level garage crossing Broad Street to a nine-story office tower. Image courtesy of Hummel Architects.
The nine-story office tower would have Zou 75 and 30 parking spaces at street level with a ramp to the main parking structure on the next five levels. There would be 34,000 square feet of office space on the top three levels, Allen said.
The 11-story tower would have four 1,600-square-foot two-story live-work units at the bottom. The corner of Fifth and Broad would have a large lobby, mailboxes and two elevators.
The third level would offer 11,600 square feet of office space.
Parking would be on the fourth and fifth levels and would extend across Broad Street and into the office building. Atop the two-story garage bridge structure would be a pedestrian plaza joining the two buildings, Allen said.
“I think the pedestrian street will be amplified (with the bridge),” Allen said.
The top six levels would have 24 condos, four to each level, with 1,300 to 1,800 square feet. Each condo would have balconies on two sides.
The proposed exteriors are a mix of natural stone and recycled fiber cement siding in different colors and textures. Ludwig has said the towers will also tap into the geothermal system, use permeable pavers, include electric vehicle charging stations in parking spaces and offer LED lighting with occupancy sensors.
Ludwig has had half ownership of the Idaho Independent Bank building for 10 years. He said a second tower was always the intention for the property but not feasible because of parking limitations. That’s how the property across the street came into play with the bridge across Broad, he said.
The time is now right for developing these properties, he said.
“I think the momentum of downtown Boise, the rents are rising,” Ludwig said. “There is a limited amount of office space available.”
The Fall Brook housing development in Star has a pond with a walking path and fitness stations. Photo by Teya Vitu.
You can go outside and play at the new 293-lot Fall Brook housing development that is underway on the north side of Star.
That’s the promise of developer Tim Eck, who has already built out the 8.15-acre open space before breaking ground on a single house.
People from neighboring subdivisions regularly use the playground and the paved path around a pond to enjoy the open space. Since September, the rest of the space bears well-groomed grass that awaits creation of three soccer fields.
Eck doesn’t mind the visitors for now, as long as they don’t tear up the grass. He took note of one 30ish guy with a dog settling onto a bench right by the gated dog relief station, cell phone to his ear.
“He could be running a multi-million-dollar company sitting here talking on the phone,” said Eck, owner of DB Development, which in recent years has primarily focused on 17 developments in Kuna. The region’s largest homebuilding company, CBH Homes, is building all the homes for those developments and for Fall Brook.
People are already using the playground and path around the pond even though no homes have been built yet at Fall Brook in Star. Photo by Teya Vitu.
The soccer fields are at Munger Road, with the 72,000-square-foot pond heading off from the largest field along an access road.
When Eck bought the 93-acre property two years ago, the area of the pond was a bit lower than the rest of the property and not easily accessible by sewer lines. The city required open space for his project, so Eck put it on the land where it was most difficult to build houses.
“What are we going to do with this open space?” the Eck team wondered at the outset. “Let’s do soccer fields.”
The pond came along later as a gravel pit remained after digging out material to create the roads for Fall Brook. What to do with the hole? Eck decided to let the shallow water table fill it.
Tim Eck
“I didn’t need this much more grass. Let’s build a pond,” he reasoned.
He’s toying with eventually adding fish. In July and August, Eck installed three fitness stations around the pond, each with three pieces of equipment.
“We have an outdoor-oriented lifestyle here (in the Treasure Valley),” Eck said. “We’re really trying to promote a community oriented to family and fitness. We adamantly want to promote that lifestyle. We want to get the kids outside. We want to get them healthy.”
Eck will create paved pathways through the neighborhood so people, especially children, don’t have to walk along the street. One of those walkways feeds right to the pond.
“I want folks to be able to have kids go out the door and not have to go down streets,” Eck said.
A lot of Eck’s vision for Fall Brook derives from his childhood in an age when kids went outside and engaged their imaginations in adventure.
“Kids came together and played on empty lots,” he reminisced. “They can do that here.”
Star Mayor Chad Bell sees the thought behind Eck’s ambitions.
“I think he’s done a beautiful job designing a housing community instead of just a subdivision,” Bell said. “The landscaping is above and behind what’s required. It gives us a little diversity in community choices.”
Eck believes Fall Brook will average out to more than two children per house – 600 kids. He believes Fallbrook’s kids themselves will keep the three soccer fields busy, but he might invite soccer clubs to use them and he’s toying with deeding the fields to the city.
One field will be regulation size for U19, U16 and U14 youth; a second field will be for U12 and U10; and the smallest field will be for U8 and U6 competition. The fields are staggered on different levels of the open space.
Star has 330 youth ages three to 14 involved in the city soccer recreational league with the older youth involved in Idaho Youth Soccer Association’s Outback League, said Ron Weston, sports coordinator in Star.
Eck’s daughter, Brittany, researched and learned that Middleton, Eagle and Star combined have 9,000 children enrolled in soccer clubs. Star’s soccer fields are full in spring and fall, said Star Zoning Administrator Cathy Ward.
CBH will build upper-end homes at Fall Brook
The Monterey model is one of the homes CBH Homes will build at Fall Brook in Star. Photo courtesy of CBH Homes.
Site work at Fall Brook started in April with all roads and utilities in place.
Eck expects to record the development plat with the city early in 2018 and start construction on the first 50 homes in spring.
“If we do 50 a year, it will take six years,” Eck said. “It’s always sales-driven.”
The homes CBH Homes will build at Fall Brook come from its portfolio already in place in several Treasure Valley communities, including nearby Pavilion in Star. They include homes in the Monterey, Vallejo and Sundance series, said Holly Haener, CBH’s marketing director.
Haener characterizes the homes as “upper end” for the “move up buyer.” Home prices have not been set, but she expects them to range from the upper $200,000s to upper $300,000s.
The one- and two-story homes will range from 1,800 to 3,000 square feet, most with three-car garages with an RV garage option.
“The floor plans and finishes will be similar to what we offer in our Pavilion community (in Star),” she said.
Eck notes lot sizes will range from 7,000 to 12,000 square feet. Different size lots are set next to each other.
“We try to mix the lots,” Eck said.
Star keeps growing with large developments
Developer Tim Eck has already built the entrance and open space for Fall Brook in Star even though no homes have been built yet. Photo by Teya Vitu.
Star remains the smallest incorporated city in Ada County with just 9,500 residents. You wouldn’t know it from entering the city on State Street, with the 587-home Village Center at Heron River on the south edge and several other developments in the works on north side of town on the way to Fall Brook.
With 293 lots, Fall Brook is only the fifth largest development in Star, said Cathy Ward, Star’s zoning administrator.
“They are platted,” Ward said. “None of them are completed.”
But hundreds of homes have been built in Star, where the population has almost doubled since 2010, when the U.S. Census counted 5,793 residents.
Star is essentially becoming the next Kuna, where the population has mushroomed from 5,300 to 19,700 since 2000. Eck and CBH have been adding 3,000 to 4,000 homes in 17 developments in Kuna. Kuna itself is becoming the next Meridian, with neighborhoods between the two cities already blurring at Amity Road.
A similar dynamic is in play in Star with its neighbor to the east.
“Star is frequently considered Eagle-lite,” Eck said. “There’s no industry here. It’s a bedroom community. It’s just quiet. We just firmly believe the market can support this.”
The eastern Idaho city of Blackfoot is seeing its first housing subdivisions move forward since about 2003, city officials said.
Three subdivisions with a combined 139 homes have been submitted, said Kurt Hibbert, Blackfoot’s planning and zoning administrator.
“Two are ready to start moving dirt,” said Hibbert, also the city’s economic development director.
Blackfoot has a population of about 12,000.
Fairchild Construction of Blackfoot plans to build 60 homes at the LNR subdivision at the south end of town.
Neil Anderson, a Blackfoot state legislator, is building a 30-home subdivision called Harbor View facing Jensens Lake.
A third subdivision by Steadman Construction of Blackfoot with 49 homes called Cooper’s Cove was submitted the first week of October. It was previously approved in 2006 but was sidelined in the recession, Hibbert said.
“That’s just showing some real confidence in our economy,” Hibbert said. “We are getting a lot of investment in Blackfoot.”
Blackfoot Mayor Paul Loomis said it has taken until this year for the city to emerge from the recession.
“We have finally turned the corner and growth is starting to take off,” Loomis said. “This is a huge deal for us.”
New Path Community Housing will be intended for the chronically homeless. The look of the building is intended to be indistinguishable from that of market-rate apartments. Image courtesy of erstad ARCHITECTS.
Once environmental work is completed on the site of the former Twin Dragon restaurant, construction is expected to start in October on Boise’s first subsidized housing for the chronically homeless population.
The 41-unit New Path Community Housing will be located at the northwest corner of Fairview Avenue and 22nd Street in an area the city of Boise has branded as the West End. Planners and others have described the area as a new extension of downtown.
The housing project should be ready by the end of 2018, and it’s expected to get about one-third of the identified chronically homeless in Boise off the streets, said Tom Mannschreck, CEO of Thomas Development Co., a New Path development partner.
The same development team will build the nearby 166-unit Adare Manor affordable housing complex.
New Path and Adare Manor are part of a much grander redevelopment plan for the Fairway and Main Street corridor between 22nd Street and Whitewater Park Boulevard (formerly 30th Street).
Revitalization started in early 2015 with the 30th and Main oral surgery center. In the same area, there are plans for a College of Western Idaho Boise campus, the 223-unit Whitewater Project apartments and a 230,000-square-foot St. Luke’s Health System facility that may specialize in orthopedics.
New Path Community Housing is a program based on the “Housing First” model; an approach to homelessness that puts a priority on providing permanent housing and includes mental and medical health professionals to tackle some of the problems that lead to homelessness. The New Path development will be the first in Boise and the first in Idaho, according to several partners that are working on the project.
The apartment comes out of an announcement in February 2016 from the local Roundtable on Housing and Homelessness that it would launch a Housing First program. The Roundtable offered a $6.8 million incentive for developers to propose a housing project for 25 to 30 chronically homeless people.
The most active players in Housing First are the city of Boise, Ada County, Idaho Housing and Finance Association, or IHFA; Boise City/Ada County Housing Authority; St. Luke’s and Saint Alphonsus health systems; Terry Reilly Health Services and Charitable Assistance To Community’s Homeless, or CATCH.
Diana Lachiondo
“Evidence has shown that helping people in great need saves money,” said Diana Lachiondo, the city’s director of community partnerships. “We are not the first community to try this. We are really interested in solutions that work.”
The team that will build New Path is Boise Pacific NIHC, a joint venture of three local developers who have previously collaborated in building and operating affordable housing projects: Northwest Integrity Housing Company and TPC Holdings V LLC with general partners Thomas Development Co. and Caleb Roope, CEO of The Pacific Companies. Tomlinson & Associates will manage the property.
“It will be a very visible sign of redevelopment of a part of town that has been vacated and underutilized for very many years,” Mannschreck said about New Path and Adare Manor.
New Path will offer only one-bedroom apartments. The Boise City/Ada County Housing Authority in March assigned 40 Section 8 housing vouchers to New Path to supplement what tenants can pay.
The city of Boise supplied $1 million toward construction and IHFA provided a $5.8 million federal Low Income Housing Tax Credit. Mannschreck declined to reveal total construction costs.
The design of New Path is indistinguishable from that of mainstream apartments, said Mannschreck.
The project architects are erstad ARCHITECTS of Boise and DG Architecture of Eagle. The general contractor is Pacific West Builders, part of the Pacific Companies.
New Path will have built-in clinic and counseling facilities with in-house case management teams of medical and mental health providers.
“Housing First doesn’t mean housing only,” Lachiondo said. “It means housing plus intensive support services. At the end of the day, it is about ending and reducing homelessness.”
Lachiondo said Boise has about 120 chronically homeless people, defined as a person with a disabling condition who has been homeless for more than a year or has had four homeless episodes. She said a Boise State University analysis determined that a chronically homeless person costs $53,000 a year per person, primarily for emergency room and jail costs.
Note: This story was updated at 9:40 a.m. on Sept. 7 with the Twin Dragon restaurant being demolished.
We use cookies on our website to give you the most relevant experience by remembering your preferences and repeat visits. By clicking “Accept”, you consent to the use of ALL the cookies.
This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Out of these cookies, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. But opting out of some of these cookies may have an effect on your browsing experience.
Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. This category only includes cookies that ensures basic functionalities and security features of the website. These cookies do not store any personal information.
Any cookies that may not be particularly necessary for the website to function and is used specifically to collect user personal data via analytics, ads, other embedded contents are termed as non-necessary cookies. It is mandatory to procure user consent prior to running these cookies on your website.
Sign In
Free Newsletter
