Downtown hotel along the Boise River closes. Here’s what we know about its future
A hotel with a checkered past along the Boise Greenbelt could see new life under plans from a Portland developer.
STK Hosford South recently bought the three-story, 111-room Cottonwood Suites hotel at 3031 W. Main St. for an undisclosed price. The hotel shut down, and a 6-foot chain-link fence was erected around the perimeter.
The project on the 55,897-square-foot parcel is in its early stages of development, said Phil Sorenson, owner of Boise’s Complete Finishing Service, the project manager.
“They’re waiting to put plans together to submit to the city for approval to do their remodel,” Sorenson said by phone.
The project follows a proposal by an affiliated Portland company that’s working to renovate the former Howard Johnson by Wyndham Boise on West Overland Road.
The owner, Fortify Holdings, plans to convert the 88 rooms at Howard Johnson’s into small studio apartments and a separate manager’s unit. The complex of five two-story buildings has been renamed The Prospect.
Portland developer Sean T. Keys is listed as manager for both companies, in incorporation filings with Idaho and Oregon secretaries of state. A phone message left for Keys was not returned.
Micro-apartments, with less space than typical studio apartments, are the latest trend in multifamily housing, meant to make efficient use of space. A sleeping area, kitchen, bathroom and living room are crammed into the space of a master bedroom.
The Prospect is waiting for issuance of a building permit. The Boise Design Review Committee approved the company’s application in July. Sorenson said he’s hopeful the permit may be issued this week.
Boise Main Auction was originally located on the 2-acre grounds of Cottonwood Suites. The auction house moved to its current location across Main Street in the 1940s.
Oregon hotel owner Mark Hemstreet built a hotel on the site in 1974 and branded it as the Shilo Inn-Boise Riverside. Shilo declared bankruptcy on the riverfront property in 2002, but continued to operate the hotel.
During the Great Recession of 2008, Shilo planned to raze the hotel and build a five-story building with 48 condominiums. At the time, the Shilo was described as located in an area that had “languished in a section of downtown severed by the Interstate 84 Connector.”
The area was within the 30th Street area — now Whitewater Park Boulevard — where city planners envisioned high-density residential housing, mixed-use businesses and parks along the Main Street-Fairview Avenue corridor.
The condo project never happened, and the landscape has changed little since, although several housing projects and commercial developments are in the works:
▪ Boise developer Roundhouse has plans for 400 apartments in multiple buildings and 70,000 square feet of retail space at what’s called Whitewater and Main, on land where Larry Barnes Chevrolet once operated. A few years ago, the seven-acre parcel was proposed for a new minor league baseball stadium that was never built.
▪ Nearby, the proposed 27th and Fairview Apartments, would consist of three buildings, two seven-story apartment buildings with a total of 358 units, and a four-story office building on the southwest corner of 27th Street and Fairview. Each of the apartment buildings would include two floors of retail space.
▪ A seven-story apartment building is proposed at the site of the Symposion bar, 2801 W. Fletcher St. It would have 169 units, interior parking and commercial space on the bottom two floors.The one-acre property is next to the Interstate 1-84 Connector and across 27th Street from where St. Luke’s Health System is building a nearly completed orthopedic hospital on the south side of West Fairview Avenue. The owner, HBCBP LLC of Atlanta, shares ownership with Greenstone Properties, which sought unsuccessfully to build the stadium. HBCBP has put the property on the market for someone else to build the apartment building. It is listed for $5.1 million.
West of the Cottonwood Suites, the College of Western Idaho planned to build a Boise campus. A bond issue failed, and the land — where Bob Rice Ford operated for decades — has remained vacant except as parking for visitors to Quinn’s Pond.
It’s unclear when the hotel changed from Shilo Inn to Cottonwood Suites. According to records from the Ada County Assessor’s Office, Cottonwood Suites Riverside and its successor, ELDA ID BO, owned the property since at least 2005.
A building permit application filed with the city of Boise in 2012 still listed the hotel as the Shilo Inn. Incorporation papers with the Idaho Secretary of State’s Office for Cottonwood Suites, using the Main Street address, weren’t filed until 2014.
