Is Boise’s Rudy the Rooster under threat again? What’s happening with iconic sign & diner
If you’ve driven down Fairview Avenue sometime in the last eight years, you probably know Rudy the Rooster, perched on top of the rotating Capri Restaurant sign.
The 7-foot-tall fiberglass rooster is an iconic piece of Boise-area lore — on par with other local idols like Betty the Washerwoman on Vista Avenue or the stallion on the former Ranch Club and Somewhere Bar in Garden City.
But his time on Fairview could come to a close. The property at 2600 W. Fairview Ave. is listed for sale. A property flier from Colliers outlined the 1-acre property, which includes the Capri and the Budget Inn next door, for $6.8 million.
Karl Maier, who listed the property with Platinum Idaho Real Estate at Silvercreek Realty Group, said the fate of Rudy is still unknown, but the new buyer could work something out with the owners.
The Capri also has another location in Meridian that it might be able to move it to, or possibly it could move to another location altogether, Maier said.
“That is super to be determined,” he said. “(But) the Capri still does have a lease in place with the owner.”
A call to Nick West, the owner of Capri, was not immediately returned.
The property going up for sale is not the first time Rudy has faced an unknown future. The giant rooster stood atop Jim’s Coffee Shop across from the Boise Co-op from the 1960s until West bought him in 2016 and moved him to his restaurant on Fairview, according to previous Idaho Statesman reporting.
Apartment development fizzles
In 2022, St. Louis-based developer Subtext proposed building a seven-story, 272-apartment building at the site amid a flurry of apartment development in the downtown core and surrounding area.
The building was planned to have a commercial space, a two-story parking garage, a gym, a club, a coworking space, a coffee bar, a game room, a rooftop terrace, a second-floor courtyard with a swimming pool, a hot tub, barbecue stations, fire pits and covered cabanas, the Statesman reported.
The site is across from St. Luke Health System’s new Center for Orthopedics and Sports Medicine and catty corner to the affordable Adare apartments that opened in 2019.
Rudy and the Capri Restaurant were protected under the plans outlined in that development, then called Local Boise Fairview.
But developers have continued to pause or pull out from such projects with poor market conditions and a downtown market saturated in new and expensive apartments. Some projects have barreled forward, such as the 26-story Arthur apartments, while others were retooled, like the Idaho Central Credit Union towers, which could turn its originally proposed rental apartment into condominiums.
Subtext was no different, Maier said, and had to pull out because of poor economic conditions while much of the housing stock has remained out of reach for most Boiseans.
“A lot of the housing that was created (since the pandemic) was higher-priced housing,” he said. “It doesn’t appeal to a lot of the average to lower-income people.”
Subtext also built the Local Boise apartment building near WinCo and Whole Foods and the Verve Boise apartments near Boise State University.
The plans for Local Boise Fairview were fully approved by the city of Boise, but Subtext asked for multiple time extensions to wait for market conditions to improve, most recently in July.
“Local Fairview was previously approved by the (city’s) Design Review Committee at their hearing of July 13, 2022,” according to an extension request from Dylan Lambur, development manager at Subtext. “In the time following this decision, the economic conditions surrounding multifamily development experienced unforeseen and dramatic changes still present today.”
“Our firm remains committed to the Local Fairview project, and we have been working diligently to overcome these challenges,” Lambur said.
But it seemed those plans had changed by October, with the Capri and Budget Inn property going up for sale.
The original development also included the Enterprise Rent-a-Car property immediately to the west of the Budget Inn, which Maier said Local Boise Fairview LLC still owns but is not a part of the property for sale. Developers often form LLCs for each project they work on.
Subtext was going to buy all three properties, Maier said, and was in contract with his client to purchase the Capri/Budget Inn property, though that never happened. Any new development would have to seek new city approvals.
Maier said that despite a slow market for commercial properties, they’ve had interest in the property already from local and out-of-state developers, but no offers yet. He also reached out to the city staff to see if they were interested in converting the Budget Inn into transitional housing, following the success of others who had converted old hotels into studio units.
“It’s definitely a good piece of property,” Maier said.
