Just before a Garden City bar gets to reopen, a fence blocks access to the Greenbelt
When The Yardarm opens Saturday, customers of the Garden City shipping-container bar will find access blocked between 35th Street and the Greenbelt. The bar owners aren’t happy, and their patrons are grumbling to the mayor.
Last week, a 6-foot wooden fence was erected along a paved path that previously led to the Greenbelt from the Waterhouse Row townhouse development. The path provided access to The Yardarm, located southwest of the housing development, at 314 E. 35th St.
“To say we’re disappointed would be an understatement,” The Yardarm posted on its Facebook page. “We were promised access to the Greenbelt before this project even got underway.”
On Thursday, Gov. Brad Little announced the state will move into Stage 3 of his Idaho Rebounds plan, allowing The Yardarm and other bars to reopen beginning Saturday from the two-month shutdown caused by the coronavirus pandemic.
Waterhouse Row opened in spring 2019 just off the Greenbelt and near the pedestrian bridge that separates Boise and Garden City, next to Quinn’s Pond and Esther Simplot Park. The Yardarm opened nearly three years earlier.
On its website, Waterhouse Row says “a pedestrian-friendly walkway will keep foot and bike traffic flowing from the Greenbelt to 35th Street and local restaurants and retailers.”
Representatives of developer Jim Neill told the Garden City City Council that access from 35th Street to the Greenbelt would remain open to the public, Mayor John Evans said after this week reviewing a recording of the meeting.
However, the final decision document did not include a requirement for the public access, Evans said.
“The stated intent in the public meeting does not carry the force of law,” Evans wrote in an email to people who wrote to him on the issue. “As the owner of Lot 15, Mr. Neill has the legal right to restrict access onto or through his private property.”
On Thursday, Evans told the Idaho Statesman that he plans to speak to Neill to ask whether he would be willing to remove the fence.
“I’m reaching out to the landowner to see if there’s a mechanism where we can overcome his objections” to open access, Evans said by phone. “I just don’t have anything definitive on what the outcome of those discussions will be.”
Neill said the city council rejected requiring a public easement through the development.
“There was no requirement for a path,” Neill said Friday by phone.
Neill said he hasn’t heard from Victor Myers, The Yardarm’s co-owner and owner of Corridor Paddle Surf Shop located next door. He was surprised to hear The Yardarm had taken to Facebook to complain about the fence.
“He has the mistaken impression there is a public right of way there,” Neill said. “We’re not obliged to take a business that chose a landlocked location and give them access, but we did.”
Public access along another section of Waterhouse Row is still provided by Neill. Pedestrians and bicyclists can enter the same gate that leads to the walkway and head northwest toward the bridge over the Boise River and Caffe Luciano’s.
That path passes by more of the townhouses than the route now cut off.
Neither Myers not his co-owner, Guy Midnight, could be reached immediately on Thursday.
Evans said he received emails from more than 100 people mostly upset about the fence. The Yardarm in a Facebook post encouraged its customers to write to him.
“This won’t stop me from coming in and taking my friends on a nice walk one street over. You’re worth it,” Boise resident Wendy Rose wrote on The Yardarm’s Facebook page.
This story was originally published May 29, 2020 at 4:00 AM.
