3rd boutique hotel in the works in downtown Boise. Plus: Food hall may open this fall
The owner of downtown Boise’s BoDo District plans to build a boutique hotel next year behind the Owyhee Plaza.
Hendricks Commercial Properties of Beloit, Wisconsin, is tentatively eyeing a seven-story building with 100 to 130 rooms on Grove Street at 11th Street.
Hendricks now operates five boutique hotels in Beloit and Delafield, Wisconsin, and in Indianapolis.
“We put a lot of detail, a lot of effort into them, because we really want to create that experience that people are like, ‘OK, wow, this is a great place to be,’” CEO Rob Gerbitz said by phone. “We don’t copy our hotels and they’re all very different experiences.”
Plans are still being worked out, but Gerbitz said his company would like to break ground early in 2022. The hotel will be built in a parking lot behind The Owyhee, a former hotel now filled with apartments, shops and offices that Hendricks bought in 2019.
It would be the third boutique hotel in the downtown of Idaho’s capital city. Hotel 43 at 981 W. Grove St. opened in 2007, followed in 2016 by the Inn at 500 Capitol, located at Capitol Boulevard and Myrtle Street. Together, the three hotels would have more than 320 rooms.
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Last year was a bad year for boutique hotels, Gerbitz said.
“We had a terrible year compared to what we normally had,” he said. “But we far exceeded our peers, because we were aggressive in our marketing and our sales and understanding the pandemic aspect of it.”
He said his company really likes the boutique business and believes it will rebound once COVID-19 subsides.
The hotel will have ground-floor businesses, including restaurant space. That will also bring business to the hotel, he said.
The Warehouse Food Hall set to open this fall
Hendricks is slated to complete work on The Warehouse Food Hall in October, Gerbitz said. The 29,000-square-foot building at South 8th and Front Street has room for 22 vendors.
The food hall uses much of the space where Urban Outfitters operated, on the northeast corner of 8th and Front streets. It extends south to Broad Street. The STIL ice cream shop and Caffe D’arte, which operate in the 8th and Broad side of the building, are being revamped to open into the rest of the hall.
Company executives have spoken to about 40 restaurant owners interested in operating in the space. Hendricks wants to fill the food hall with local and regional restaurants and has signed up a handful so far.
“We’re not ready to announce them yet, but we’ve had everything from poké to a bakery, there’s a bar concept we’re looking to put in there and an open market section,” he said. “We’re also looking at a smattering of seafood. People really like that in food halls.”
Hendricks opened a similar food hall this month in Indianapolis. The Garage Food Hall at Bottleworks, at a former Coca Cola bottling plant, has a mix of local favorites and food truck operators moving into a permanent space.
Although Indianapolis restaurants are limited to 50% capacity because of the pandemic, the food hall has done well in the two weeks since it opened, he said.
The food hall has 14 of its 26 spaces open, with three more on the way in the next week. People have stood outside in the cold on Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights waiting to get in, he said.
“You know the vendors were nervous, they were really nervous because they’re putting their blood, sweat and tears and money into opening,” he said. “It’s been really positive. It’s the right time to be building this in Boise.”
Hendricks is owned by Diane Hendricks, 70, who also chairs ABC Supply, one of the nation’s largest wholesale sellers of windows, roofing and siding. She has run the company since the 2007 death of her husband, Ken, who cofounded it.
ABC Supply has more than 700 locations, including stores in Boise, Meridian and Nampa.
In 2016, Gerbitz began looking at Boise, one of several towns the company was considering for an investment. The following year, Hendricks bought the three buildings that make up BoDo for $25 million.
This story was originally published January 20, 2021 at 4:00 AM.
