Parents can’t get child care. Bench streets decline. The week’s top 5 business stories
The top 5 Idaho business stories of the week:
1. Boise-area parents are finding that having a child requires more than just the traditional supplies of tiny clothes and diapers. With day care centers in short supply, being a parent in the Treasure Valley increasingly requires leaving no stone unturned in the search for child care.
2. Over objections from Boise’s mayor, Gov. Brad Little has signed a bill that places new limits on how cities can use property taxes in urban-renewal districts to fund stadiums and municipal buildings without going to voters. But the bill’s impact on Boise’s planned new Downtown library and a proposed sports stadium west of Downtown remains unclear. A citizens group says it still plans to gather signatures for a petition to put the projects on the November ballot.
3. Overland Road. Vista Avenue. Orchard and Latah streets. These streets are among the most important commercial strips on the Boise Bench. But two of every five buildings in a proposed redevelopment area encompassing large segments of these streets are in deteriorated condition. City officials want to create an urban renewal district to do for the streets what they say urban renewal did for Downtown: Save them.
4. There’s a new farmers market in Boise: a once-a-month evening market on First Thursday at Jack’s Urban Meeting Place, 1000 W. Myrtle St. Meanwhile, in Meridian, Rod and Deb Wagner aren’t going to sell their Wagner Farms store in a barn at Ten Mile Road and Chinden Boulevard after all. They plan to build a 12,000-square-foot convenience store with a year-round farmers market inside.
5. A longtime Boise restaurant serving Chinese and American food has closed. Confucius Restaurant, 8775 W. Fairview Ave., has shuttered so that its owners can retire.
Statesman reporters Hayley Harding, John Sowell, Kate Talerico and Michael Deeds contributed.
This story was originally published April 9, 2019 at 9:19 PM.
