These apartments would replace Elmer’s near BSU’s entrance. What would happen to it?
Goodbye, generous omelets and big buttermilk pancakes. Hello, college students with backpacks.
Boiseans will soon get a chance to weigh in on a Chicago developer’s proposal to build apartments for Boise State University students and other tenants on the site of Elmer’s Restaurant along Capitol Boulevard.
The 44-year-old building housing the breakfast-and-lunch restaurant would be razed to make way for a five-story building with 47 apartments just south of, and across the boulevard from, the main campus entrance at University Drive. A companion building, with six stories and 41 apartments, would be built just to the west across Lois Street.
CA Ventures proposes the apartments. The developer is familiar with Boise, having built the five-story, 95-unit Identity Boise student apartments on Boise Avenue in 2018. It still owns and manages them. (CA is short for Campus Acquisitions, which is no longer the company’s name.)
For fans of Elmer’s, the question is: Is this the end?
The restaurant is popular with weekend brunchers and out-of-town visitors. Longtime Treasure Valley residents may remember that Elmer’s once had restaurants at 6767 W. Fairview Ave. in Boise and 1411 Shilo Drive in Nampa. The Capitol Boulevard restaurant is the only one left.
Elmer’s Restaurants Inc.’s top executive wants diners to rest assured: Elmer’s will stay in Boise regardless. The company is working with a commercial real estate agent to find a new location, President and CEO Jerry Scott told the Idaho Statesman.
“That area has become essentially an adjunct area next to campus,” Scott said by phone from the company headquarters in Eugene, Oregon. Boise “is a good market for us, so we will relocate.”
Elmer’s traces its history to 1960, when Walt and Dorothy Elmer opened Elmer’s Colonial Pancake House in Portland. Elmer’s has two other Idaho restaurants: one in Coeur d’Alene and one in Pocatello.
Scott, whose company owns the Boise restaurant building, declined to disclose its sale price.
Developer’s big plans for Boise State area
CA Ventures likes the Lusk District so much that it plans two additional apartment developments there. It plans to own and manage them, too.
A big one is already under construction: Uncommon Boise, at 917 S. Lusk St. The five-story, 295,000-square-foot complex would have 180 apartments right next to the Boise River Greenbelt. This project required the demolition of a building too: a three-story office building just 17 years old.
A small building with 34 apartments is planned at 916 W. Sherwood St., at the corner of LaPointe Street, next to Jim’s Appliance and Furniture.
“There really is a severe housing shortage in and around downtown Boise and adjacent to the Boise State University area,” said Tommy Sinnott, CA Ventures’ vice president of investments, in a phone interview. “We see that as a demand driver for additional housing.”
Architects’ renderings of CA Ventures’ building along Capitol bear the name Latitude. Like Identity, it’s a name CA has used on student apartments in other cities. But Sinnott said the company has not yet decided on the apartments’ name.
CA Ventures’ three projects are a big part of a second wave of student apartments coming to the Lusk District, across Capitol from the campus. The wave also includes 91 apartments proposed by Gardner Co. at the site of a former Pizza Hut at 818 W. Ann Morrison Park Drive.
The first wave brought several complexes built in 2015, reshaping an old commercial district into a center for student living as Boise State’s enrollment grew.
But Sinnott stressed that none of CA Ventures’ three developments is solely for students. Anyone can apply to rent there, he said. About half the units of each project would be studios or one- or two-bedroom apartments, suitable for university employees, downtown professionals and young families, he said.
The other half would be mostly four- and five-bedroom options favored by students who rent one bedroom in each, while friends or other people rent the others. Each bedroom has its own bathroom. The tenants share a common kitchen and living area.
CA Ventures’ building along Capitol would have 126 rooms, the building along Lois 139. That’s enough for 265 people. The Uncommon Boise apartments would have enough rooms for more than 500.
Papa Joe’s restaurant stays put
Sinnott said rents would be competitive with comparable new or recent apartments within a mile of the new apartments. Students pay $949 to $1,419 per person per month at Identity, according to Apartments.com, in apartments ranging from studios to five-bedroom units.
An early version of CA Ventures’ proposal raised the prospect that another restaurant, Papa Joe’s at 1301 S. Capitol Blvd., would be replaced too. Sinnott said that idea was later cast aside. “It wasn’t going to work out with the land seller,” he said.
The proposed apartments are scheduled to be the subject of a public hearing before Boise’s Planning and Zoning Commission in a meeting that starts at 6 p.m. Monday, Nov. 7, at Boise City Hall, 150 N. Capitol Blvd.
This story was originally published October 27, 2022 at 4:00 AM.
