‘Garden City’s new downtown.’ City approves tallest building yet—right on the Greenbelt
Soon, Garden City will have a new downtown.
At least, that’s how Michael Talbott puts it. On March 23, Garden City’s City Council approved the Las Vegas developer’s 7-acre apartment and hotel project, called the Boardwalk. The development would front the Boise River Greenbelt, stretching across two blocks from Veterans Memorial Parkway east to 40th Street.
“We are increasing access to the Greenbelt,” Talbott said. “I hope it will draw people in as a real destination.”
The project would also bring Garden City its tallest building yet — a nine-story, 148-room boutique hotel, in addition to two apartment buildings, which would rent at market rate.
But don’t expect to see the hotel first. Of the three buildings in the development, Talbott first plans to build a five-story apartment building with 237 units and an underground parking garage. The building will also include five commercial tenant spaces, all facing toward the river and the site’s central plaza area, featuring outdoor seating, bike racks and meandering paths that echo the curvilinear forms of the hotel.
The next to go in would be a five-story, 38-unit apartment building called 406 Place, located north of the intersection of 40th and Adams Street.
The hotel would be last. It will include a restaurant, rooftop bar, and retail spaces.
The construction timeline will depend upon the hotel industry’s recovery from COVID-19, which has shattered revenue projects and sparked widespread layoffs.
“The hotel is a smarter play once the apartments are up, anyway,” Talbott said in a phone interview. “The hotel will feed off all that activity, once it’s there.”
Some components of the project frustrated nearby residents. They worried that their neighborhood’s quiet residential areas, now lined by mobile homes and cottage houses, would be consumed by the multistory development.
Talbott said he tried to listen to neighbors’ concerns and adjust the project.
The height of the 406 Place apartments was reduced from 70 feet to 61 feet, removing a story. In a move to alleviate the car traffic flowing through the nearby residential neighborhood, the architects also reduced the number of parking spaces in the building to 109 from 184, so as to serve the building’s tenants, rather than the public.
Talbott hopes that most people will walk or ride their bike to the Boardwalk, rather than drive. He said he hopes to include a bike shop on site, as well as electric car rentals for tenants who may not bring cars.
The 13 current mobile home owners on the site would still have to move, Talbott said, but he expects that won’t be required until 2021.
For now, Talbott is focused on finishing up engineering and site plans. He hopes to file a permit to begin construction by the end of this year.
“This will be the highest concentration of activity for bikes and eating and lounging on the Greenbelt for quite some time,” Talbott said. “We’re going to try to be really out of the box.”
