Apartment-building fire in downtown Boise raises questions yet to be answered
At first glance, there wasn’t anything unusual Friday outside the Jules on Third apartment building under construction one block south of the Ada County Courthouse.
Four stories up, a laborer stood working on top of the building’s parking garage. Around the corner, two workers applied texture under a third-floor eave. On another side, a man on a lift truck worked next to a window.
But across the street there was a pickup belonging to a Boise Fire Department battalion chief. Nearby was a truck from Belfor Property Restoration, a company that provides fire cleanup services.
They were following up the fire that sent smoke and flames from the roof of the eight-story building at South 2nd and West Myrtle streets at 6:35 p.m. Thursday. The fire’s cause was not publicly known Friday.
Also not known was the extent of the damage to the roof and the completed apartments on the eighth floor, or the blaze’s impact on the developer’s ability to complete and open the building by July as planned.
“The cause and resulting impact of the fire are under investigation,” Opus Design Build of Minnetonka, Minnesota, the building contractor, said by email.
Firefighters arrived five minutes after receiving the call. They used two ladder trucks to reach the eighth story — the limit of the ladders’ height. Seven engines, three truck companies and 15 Boise Fire units responded.
Access to the building was difficult initially, because it’s still under construction. A nearby fire hydrant was not yet in service, so firefighters had to run fire hoses up the ladder to spray the roof, the fire department said.
The project consists of 173 market-rate apartments split among studios and one- and two-bedroom units. Each tenant will have access to one of the 400 parking spaces available in the garage, which takes up a portion of the bottom three floors. There will also be 192 bicycle parking spaces.
Ada County bought part of the garage so that court employees and visitors may use it.
Jules on Third is one of several apartment complexes under construction or on the drawing board in downtown Boise.
The project is similar to The Fowler, a 159-apartment building that Roundhouse, a Boise developer, opened in 2018 just a block away, at 505 W. Broad St.
Two blocks east of Jules on Third, St. Louis-based Collegiate Development Group recently began work on a seven-story, 258-unit apartment building with a 358-space parking garage and 7,800 square feet of commercial space. The building is being built at the intersection of Avenue A and Myrtle Street — a parking lot between WinCo and Whole Foods.
Roundhouse is also building the Cartee, an apartment building at 4th and Broad Streets. Of its 161 units, five will be ground level live-work units, which will include commercial and living spaces. Fifteen will be “micro” units, 27 will be studios, 60 one-bedroom units, and 54 two-bedroom units.
Boise Developer Chris Carley has two apartment building projects on Grove Street between 5th and 6th streets. Construction began last summer on the buildings, which will have 174 units.
At Jules on Third, the building’s fire suppression system had not been completed, so it could not be used to stop the fire. An examination of the building’s city fire permit does not make clear how much of the system, which requires sprinklers, has been installed.
Since Nov. 30, 16 city inspections of different parts of the system have been conducted. The most recent inspection took place Wednesday, according to city filings.
The city employee who conducted most of the inspections did not return a call Friday.
Kevin McGraw, president of River Caddis Development Co. of Lansing, Michigan, the developer; and John McGraw, the company’s development director, did not return a phone call and emails Friday.
No one was in the building and the fire was declared under control at 7:08 p.m, the fire department said. No one was injured.
This story was originally published March 5, 2021 at 3:49 PM.
