California developer wants to tear down offices to build new student apartments
Everyone, it seems, wants to get in on Boise’s housing market: A developer is scrapping his plans for a Garden City hotel to build an 18-story condo building instead. The city of Boise is considering tossing out a 25-year-old plan for a park to make room for houses. And now a developer wants to tear down an office building near Boise State University to build off-campus student apartments.
Located at 917 S. Lusk St. along the river near the Ninth Street Bridge, the office building is just 16 years old. It is owned by California-based Rancho Coachello Properties, according to Ada County records.
The office building has three stories and 28,045 square feet of space. The proposed apartment building would be five stories with 291,399 square feet. It would consist of 180 apartments with 498 bedrooms, including studios, one-bedrooms, two-bedrooms, three-bedrooms, four bedrooms and five-bedrooms. Proposed rent has not yet been made public, but similar off-campus apartments in the area go for $600 to $800 per room.
The rectangular building would have two outdoor courtyards inside the building and 2,000 square feet of commercial space. . A sky deck with a view toward campus is planned for the fifth floor.
The developer is asking the city to rezone the property as residential commercial and to reduce parking requirements by 30%. Instead of the required 245 spaces, they want to offer 176 spaces.
The application was filed by Matt Pietras on behalf of Rancho Coachello Properties. Pietras is an architect with SCB, a San-Francisco-based architecture and planning firm. Pietras specializes in campus environments.
“Over the past 20 years, he has been responsible for over two million square feet for premier institutions and organizations including Stanford University, University of California, WeWork, Dow, and Mozilla,” states Pietras’ profile on the SCB website.
The proposed student apartment building was first reported by BoiseDev.
Sally Krutzig covers Treasure Valley growth and development. Have a story suggestion or a question? Email Krutzig at skrutzig@idahostatesman.com.
