The look and feel of Village at Meridian? This is new plan for CWI’s coming Boise campus
After eight years of waiting, the College of Western Idaho may finally break ground on a campus in Boise’s West End this year.
But it won’t be a typical college campus. After selecting Ball Ventures Ahlquist, or BVA, to develop the site in April, the college has entered into a public-private partnership with the company and its development partners to build a campus without burdening taxpayers. Voters rejected a $180 million bond measure in 2016.
New plans call for apartments and spaces for restaurants, stores and other businesses that the college could generate revenue from with BVA.
“That’s the lion’s share of the funding that will support it,” said CWI spokesperson Ashley Smith. “It’s a good way to keep the costs manageable.”
So instead of a grassy, tree-lined college quad filled with college students throwing Frisbees, the site could be shaped into more of an urban, downtown campus with shops, food and office space along with a new home for the college’s business, computer science and cybersecurity degree programs.
The 10-acre planned campus at 3150 W. Main St. — the former site of the Bob Rice Ford car dealership on the northwest corner of Main Street and Whitewater Park Boulevard — would centralize the college’s Boise operations after years of leasing multiple buildings throughout the city.
The campus would serve the college’s over 30,000 students and strengthen its Boise presence as enrollment continues to grow, according to Smith. Fall 2023 enrollment grew 3.8% over the previous fall term, with over 51% of students living in Ada County.
According to the CWI website, over 7,000 students attend classes and programs in leased facilities in Boise.
“This new campus allows us to better serve those students and future students,” Smith wrote in an email.
The campus places the college near the business and civic hubs of Idaho, Smith wrote, which could lead to more employment opportunities for students.
“CWI needs to continue to deliver programs and serve students throughout the valley and this campus will complement and integrate with programs provided in Nampa and online,” according to CWI’s website.
According to Tommy Ahlquist, CEO of Ball Ventures Ahlquist, the site would also boast a significant amount of space for retail stores and several restaurants, with a walkable design that engages the Boise River. It would be known as CWI Whitewater Village.
“I think they’re going to have a legacy site here that allows them to really attract students to a downtown environment,” Ahlquist told the Idaho Statesman.
An eight-story building on the northwest corner of Main Street and Whitewater Park Boulevard would be the campus’ signature building and would host the college, Ahlquist said.
All of CWI’s Boise classes would be condensed into the one office building so the college could exit its leases in buildings on Maple Grove and Overland roads.
The first floor would be dedicated to about 11,000 square feet of retail space on the eastern side and 8,900 square feet on the western side, according to documents submitted to the city of Boise.
The second through fourth floors would be dedicated to about 60,000 square feet of student spaces and classrooms, Smith said.
Future tenants of the building will determine the uses of floors five through eight, which have about 20,000 square feet each, according to the documents, but Smith said the college would have the option to occupy those floors if needed.
“We own the land, but in this partnership they’re basically paying us each year to lease the property,” Smith said. “That’s how we’re going to pay for that building.”
The new campus would not affect tuition or fees for students, Smith said, which haven’t been raised in eight years. Nor would it rely on state aid or require an increase in the property taxes that homeowners and businesses in Ada and Canyon counties pay to support CWI.
“We aren’t receiving any state funding for the Boise campus,” Smith said.
Ahlquist said the full site will have the look and feel of The Village at Meridian but with the Boise River alongside. He estimated the project’s total cost would be over $250 million.
The CWI building is expected to cost $26 million, Smith said. That’s just over 10% of the cost to develop the entire site.
BVA is also planning to build 200 market-rate apartments, a hotel and a parking structure. Ahlquist did not say how much rents would cost. Available apartments at the Whitewater Park Apartments, which are adjacent to the site, run from nearly $1,400 to just under $3,000 per month. The median rent in Boise is $1,229 per month, according to Apartment List, but prices are generally higher for newer units in or near downtown.
“This is going to be a wonderful place to live,” Ahlquist said.
The project has been a long time coming, with the college first buying the 10-acre parcel in 2015 for $8.8 million, according to prior Statesman reporting. Smith said the new campus could open for classes in the fall of 2026.
Idaho developers form partnership to build campus
The Idaho Falls-based Ball Ventures and Ball Ventures Ahlquist, which is based in Meridian, said in a news release that the companies had formed a partnership with a new business, Elevated Property Co., to help build the College of Western Idaho campus and other projects throughout the Mountain West.
Fred Bruning, Sean Dennison and Chris Byers, each from the California-based CenterCal Properties that built The Village at Meridian, started Elevated Property Co., or EPC.
The College of Western Idaho campus is the first project the partnership will work on together, with EPC as the retail partner.
“We’re really excited about that,” Ahlquist said. “To have (Bruning) as our partner on these projects, it’s a dream come true.”
BVA is also partnering with the Salt Lake City-based Alpha Development Group for the apartments and Idaho Falls-based B&T Hospitality Management for the hotel.
Hummel Architects, of Boise, is designing the campus, and Meridian-based Engineered Structures Inc. is building it.
This isn’t the first time Ahlquist proposed a commercial development as a way to redevelop public property. In 2020, Ahlquist and BVA proposed redeveloping the abandoned horse-racing track and outbuildings next to Expo Idaho into a baseball and soccer stadium, apartments and single-family homes, a hotel, office buildings, restaurants and stores, according to prior Statesman reporting.
Ada County eventually awarded the redevelopment of that site to Port, a Philadelphia and Chicago-based firm, to turn it into a 97-acre park.
This story was originally published January 6, 2024 at 4:00 AM.
