2nd big apartment development planned in Boise’s West End. Area to change dramatically
A major development combining an apartment complex, an office building and retail space is proposed across the street from where a baseball stadium was once planned.
The new project, the 27th and Fairview Apartments, on the southwest corner of 27th Street and West Fairview Avenue, would consist of three buildings, two seven-story apartment buildings with a total of 358 units, and a four-story office building. Each of the apartment buildings would include two floors of retail space.
The project is the latest of four big developments promising new life to a cluster of blocks that once were little more than weed-riddled parking lots not far from the Boise River in the West End.
The first, the Adare Apartments between 24th and 25th streets on Fairview, opened in October 2019. The second, an orthopedic hospital between 25th and 27th streets, is under construction by St. Luke’s Health System across 25th on the south side of Fairview. The third, these 27th and Fairview Apartments, would be immediately west of the hospital. The fourth is a previously announced apartment complex with retail, just across Fairview and north of the 27th and Fairview Apartments, that has yet to begin construction.
Kal Pacific & Associates, a California development company owned by Don Veasey of Temecula, California, is the 27th and Fairview developer.
“This is the direction that downtown is growing in,” Veasey said by phone. “And this is the last piece of land that is on the Boise River. It’s right down the Greenbelt from Whitewater Park, Kathryn Albertson Park and Ann Morrison Park.”
In an application with the city of Boise, Jay Gibbons, a planner with South, Beck and Baird Landscape Architecture in Boise, said the development “will provide an attractive mixed-use retail/housing type in the area and provide recreational opportunities to our future residents.”
The project would be built on seven parcels totaling 5 acres. Only one of the properties, at 27th and Fletcher Street, is occupied. The building at 277 S. 27th St., which now houses Wandervans and Butler Customs, an auto repair business, would be razed. The Symposion bar, on a separate parcel, would remain.
The buildings would be located across 27th from a St. Luke’s Boise Medical Center surgery center under construction. The properties are east of where a baseball and soccer stadium were once proposed.
The stadium project fell apart after the Idaho Legislature restricted the use of urban-renewal funds and Boise voters passed an ordinance requiring a public vote on a stadium. Los Angeles developer Roundhouse now hopes to build about 400 apartments on the parcel.
The Kal Pacific and Roundhouse projects, with about 750 units combined, would bring two of the largest apartment complexes to Ada County, said Carl Miller, principal planner for COMPASS, the regional planning agency.
Other major projects include the Indigo/Southridge complex in Meridian, with nearly 500 units.
Regency at River Valley has 328 apartments, followed by Kensington at North Pointe in Boise with 324.
The Jasper apartments in Meridian has 1,104 units, but only 144 are traditional apartments. The rest are small, dormitory-style rooms.
Casey Lynch, the principal in Roundhouse, a Los Angeles company that moved its headquarters to Boise last fall, said he hopes to begin construction this year on his Main and Whitewater project’s first phase. It’s set to include 150 apartments and about 15,000 square feet of retail space.
“We’re negotiating with a prospective retailer right now, which is going to dictate a lot of the development program,” Lynch said.
He expects the first phase to take about two years.
An affiliate of Greenstone Properties, a sister company to Agon Sports, the owner of the Boise Hawks, bought the Symposion in 2019.
The Kal Pacific properties abut the I-184 Connector and the Boise Greenbelt. An entrance to the Greenbelt at the end of Fletcher Street would remain. The city has also asked that developers provide a Greenbelt connection at Fairview Avenue, but Gibbons said they would honor.
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Parking for 464 vehicles would be provided within the two apartment buildings. It would serve apartment residents and guests, office and retail workers and customers and the public. There would also be space for 367 bicycles.
The parcels are owned by Veasey; LGD Ventures of Boise; and D.Y. Boise River LLC.
Darrn Goldberg of San Diego is listed as manager of LGD Ventures, according to corporate records filed with the Idaho Secretary of State’s Office. Daniel Yanke, of the family that owns the Yanke Machine Shop in southeast Boise, is listed as the owner of D.Y. Boise River.
Veasey is a member of a group, Idaho Health & Fitness, that bought seven Idaho Athletic Club gyms in the Treasure Valley in 2017. That introduced him to Southern Idaho and led him to build six houses in Star. He’s also working on a 30-lot subdivision in Kuna.
“I was looking for a way to get out of California and looked at different markets, including Dallas and Idaho,” he said. “Once I got to Idaho, I fell in love with the place and looked at what was going on with the growth.”
Veasey said he now spends about eight months a year in Idaho and the rest of the time in California. He also has developments in Texas and Arizona.
The two apartment buildings, which would have 426,000 square feet and 295,000 square feet, would include two floors of parking on the retail levels. The larger building would have 33,500 square feet for retail, while the smaller building would have 7,000 square feet of retail space.
The developer has asked to extend Whitewater Park Boulevard east through the property. Currently, the road dead-ends at Fairview. The new configuration would connect to Fletcher Street.
Goodman Oil operated along Fletcher Street for more than 100 years. Although the site never included underground tanks, because of its proximity to the Boise River, there could be site contamination that could require mitigation, the application noted.
Boisedev.com first wrote about the project.
A meeting before the Boise Design Review Committee is set for 6 p. m. Wednesday, Feb. 10 at Boise City Hall. The hearing can also be viewed online.
This story was originally published January 29, 2021 at 4:00 AM.
