Apartments on site of historic Boise building. What Meta wants in Kuna. Coming near you
The latest proposed developments, housing and other construction projects, and new businesses around Idaho’s Treasure Valley:
Boise
Plans for the historic Idaho National Guard Armory building and adjacent property in Boise’s East End are taking shape.
Utah-based Alpha Development has proposed building 177 apartments and 29 town houses in four buildings on the site.
Two apartment buildings would have five stories, including an underground parking garage, which makes the buildings four stories tall above ground. The two other buildings, each with town houses, would have three stories.
The plans include a rooftop lounge, a pool and spa, a common-area kitchen lounge near the pool, a fitness area, an outdoor yoga location, an outdoor movie area, a hammock garden, a slackline balancing space, and multiple fire pits.
The property is at 801 Reserve St. near the base of the Military Reserve trails. The armory building was built in the 1930s and is on the National Register of Historic Places.
It’s been vacant for decades. In the early 2000s there were plans for a multimillion-dollar theater complex, the Idaho Statesman previously reported. The idea of affordable housing was floated in the 2010s.
The details on what will go in the armory building itself are scant. According to an application filed with the city, a proposal for improvements to the armory building itself will be submitted later. The developer has told neighbors that it wants to use the armory as a community center that might include a coffee shop, a restaurant, a bike shop or other occupants.
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Boise company Riya LLC wants to construct a building to raise fish and grow organic vegetables in Southeast Boise, near Micron’s campus and the southeast corner of East Gowen Road and South Federal Way.
The building would be for aquaponics, a combination of the words aquaculture and hydroponics. The company plans to raise the fish and grow the vegetables in a controlled environment with low water usage and no soil.
The site would feature four 135-foot-by-35-foot greenhouses and another structure of the same size to serve as a fish house.
Riya LLC’s Scott Meikle met with city officials for a pre-application conference and applied for a neighborhood meeting list.
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Kuna
Meta, formerly Facebook, wants to build permanent access points for its planned server farm on Kuna Mora Road.
Meta’s hulking data center is destined for the northeast corner of Kuna Mora and Cole roads. The project is an $800 million investment and would bring 1,200 construction jobs and 100 permanent jobs, the Idaho Statesman previously reported. It’s planned to have eight buildings full of servers on 242 acres.
Because the site is less than a mile from the nearest intersection, Meta applied for a waiver from the Ada County Highway District to build the access points. ACHD’s staff recommended that the district’s commissioners approve the request.
“ACHD staff issued a letter to the applicant recognizing the economic importance of this project to the city of Kuna,” an ACHD staff report said, “and supported the city proceeding with the public hearing process with the condition the project be required to comply with all ACHD conditions of approval.”
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Ada County
Three proposals have been named finalists in a competition to redevelop the eastern portion of the Expo Idaho grounds along the Boise River.
The Ada County Commission’s request for proposals in July said the county wants to build a park that serves underserved neighborhoods and has “green space, tree cover, gathering spaces, playing fields, recreation facilities, and safe sidewalks, away from traffic, for walking and nonmotorized cycling.”
The finalists are The Land Group, in Eagle; a partnership between Boise’s Stack Rock and RIOS, an international firm; and a partnership between NV5 and Port Urbanism, two out-of-state firms.
The RIOS and Port Urbanism proposals received the highest scores, while the Land Group’s placed third.
The selected firms will be awarded $5,000 each and will have roughly 60 days to complete designs. The proposals will be reviewed by the county in October.
The county plans to do a phased approach to the project, using the finalists’ designs as a guide to determine what is feasible within the budget for the work, which is less than $50 million, said Bob Bautista, the director of Expo Idaho.
At a meeting on Aug. 3, the county commissioners discussed using federal dollars for the park.
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Meridian
Justin Waters, of Julie Rivers Development in Eagle, wants to create 32 condominium offices in eight buildings at the northeast corner of North Linder and West Ustick roads.
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The Meridian Planning and Zoning Commission recommended that the City Council approve the proposal.
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Will Goede, of Sawtooth Development in Ketchum, wants to develop an industrial park on Black Cat Road near Interstate 84.
The park would have nine buildings, according to the application, ranging in size from 131,000 to 342,160 square feet. It would also have seven smaller commercial buildings ranging from 6,800 to 33,600 square feet.
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The park would include parcels at 350, 745, 936 and 955 S. Black Cat Road.
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Nampa
A taco truck, La Garnacha Que Apapacha, faced complaints about its customers parking in its neighbors’ parking lot and heard warnings from the city that it would not allow the truck to remain parked near Blazen Burgers in downtown Nampa.
After meeting with Nampa Mayor Debbie Kling, owner Jose Sanchez said the issues have been resolved, and the taco truck will keep serving birria tacos at the site.
La Garnacha Que Apapacha has been in Nampa for more than two years, Sanchez said. He posted on social media and started a change.org petition when he thought the truck would be kicked out.
“It was a bunch of misunderstandings between city officials that we addressed with meetings with the mayor,” said Sanchez by phone. “So everybody now is on the same page. We are able to keep our spot and just keep working.”
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Notable
Moody’s Analytics, a financial analysis company, predicts Boise real estate prices will continue to drop, according to Fortune.
The median price of an Ada County home reached a record $602,250 in May, according to the Intermountain Multiple Listing Service. It dropped to $592,090 in June and to $589,990 in July.
Moody’s predicts the price will fall 4.3% from the fourth quarter of 2022 to the fourth quarter of 2023. It predicts an additional 2% decline from the fourth quarter of 2023 to the fourth quarter of 2024.
“Significantly ‘overvalued’ housing markets are usually the very places that see the biggest home price declines once the housing cycle ‘rolls over,’” Fortune reported.
A map included in Fortune’s article shows Boise as the most overvalued housing market in the country, based on calculations by Moody’s Analytics. Boise has received national notoriety recently as it’s been repeatedly earned that title in various rankings.
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Boise office tenants are flocking to sublease some of their leased space in what TOK Commercial says is “a typical response to economic downturn.”
Office space available for sublease totals 626,000 square feet, more than four times as much before the pandemic, TOK said in its latest quarterly office-market report. Subleasing rose gradually during the pandemic before surging 50% in the latest quarter, TOK said.
“The sharp increase this year is ... a possible indicator of things to come,” said the report. Tenants sublease as they re-evaluate their space needs and seek to lease unneeded space to control costs, the report said.
TOK emphasized that for the time being, the office market remains strong, with a record-low vacancy rate of 4.3%. The rise in construction costs has pushed lease rates for newly build space into the range of $30 per square foot per year.
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This story was originally published August 18, 2022 at 4:00 AM.
