These North End condos were approved in 2017. They still haven’t been built.
In 2017, the Boise City Council approved a four-story, 31-unit condo building at the intersection of 8th and Fort streets, then the site of Baird’s Dry Cleaner’s in Boise’s North End.
Two and a half years later, the old Baird’s has been demolished, but the condos have yet to be built.
They will be soon, said Tim Gardner, one of the developers on the project, called The Metropolitan.
“We wanted to break ground this coming month,” Gardner said.
Now, with the coronavirus slowing the economy, including some commercial lending, the developers are taking it slow. In a phone interview, Gardner said he expects to begin construction late this summer, though that date is “a moving target.” Upon breaking ground, construction is set to last 18 months.
The condos have been long awaited in one of Boise’s hottest neighborhoods, which hasn’t seen the same boom in multifamily housing that downtown and the West End have.
The Metropolitan will include just 29 condos, instead of 31 as originally planned, since some buyers wanted larger spaces. Most units in the building will range in size from 800 to 850 square feet for one-bedroom units and 1,250 to 1,300 square feet for two-bedroom units. They will sell from $390,000 to $600,000 each, Gardner said.
The street level will have 3,000 square feet of commercial space.
Dave Southers, Gardner’s partner, who also developed the Hyde Park Place condos four blocks north, previously told the Statesman that he had never seen as much interest for one of his projects.
Still, the developers had to wait until about 70% of the units in the building were sold until they could secure financing.
“Most people don’t realize the lending climate has changed dramatically since 2006,” Gardner said.
After the Great Recession, the government-backed mortgage financing company Fannie Mae said it would not guarantee mortgages in buildings where fewer than 70% of condos were sold ahead of time. Commercial lenders quickly adopted their higher standards, making it more difficult to finance condo buildings, Gardner said.
Why condos, rather than apartments?
“The land costs are too high in that area for a for-rent product,” Gardner said. “It does not yield enough units to reach scalable operational efficiencies.”
The Ada County Property Assessor’s Office valued the vacant parcel at $635,900 in 2019.
Why not build higher?
More units would require more parking, Gardner said, and that would be prohibitively expensive. Already, the project will include an underground parking garage with about 36 spots, each one costing about $30,000 to build.
Gardner said the project is nearly sold out, and he is confident he will find buyers for the remaining units soon.
“It’s bikeable. We’re within walking distance of Idaho’s major employers,” he said. “We have an irreplaceable location.”
