Big plans near Boise Airport revived after divisive fraud, stolen idol lawsuits. Why?
Your trip to or from the Boise Airport may look a little different in the future. Plans for a big nearby redevelopment with a 183-unit apartment complex, a 240-room hotel and a 12,000 square-foot Hindu temple have resumed after a divisive court battle stalled them.
The developments would transform the decaying Ramada by Wyndham Boise hotel and Saffron Indian Bar and Grill at 3300 S. Vista Ave. — the last property you pass while driving down Vista before crossing Interstate 84 to get to the airport. The site is directly across the street from a Del Taco and Super 8 by Wyndham Boise.
The site also includes America’s Best Value Inn at 2525 Sunrise Rim Road and Lotus By Hotel Inn at 3302 S. Vista Ave. All would be demolished for the development.
The plans drew controversy in 2023 while its owners applied for the redevelopment with former Mayor David Bieter and his employer, Salt Lake City-based Gardner Co. Lawsuits alleged that the property owners had illegally taken control of the property and that they had taken sacred Hindu idols.
As of March 10, both lawsuits had been settled with confidential agreements, allowing the development to move forward, according to Steven Weiland, a Boise lawyer who represented the property owners in both lawsuits.
What happened with Boise hotel lawsuits?
Though the project saw some opposition from nearby neighbors, the biggest roadblock for the project came when Las Vegas businessman Hitesh Chokshi sued Boise Management Inc., which owns the properties, along with its property manager, Jayant Patil, and a local owner named Rakesh Kothari. The lawsuit alleged a veritable shopping list of offenses including breach of contract, unjust enrichment, forgery and wrongful conversion of property.
A judge threw out most of the allegations in October 2023, saying that Chokshi never had a direct, personal ownership interest in the properties. Chokshi and his company, Utah TM Hospitality, “undisputedly sold the hotel properties for $6.5 million to Boise Management, in which he has never had an interest,” according to the judge’s ruling.
Chokshi had asked the court to remove Patil and Kothari from their positions and undo the sale of the property. The judge excoriated Chokshi, saying that his complaint wasn’t “a model of clarity” and that “Utah TM Hospitality has no evident grounds for asking to have the sale undone.”
Chokshi amended his complaint but settled the case over a year later after a one-day court trial on March 3. Chokshi said by phone that they had settled the case with a confidential agreement and could not comment.
“Basically at its core was who owned the holding company for these hotels when the hotels were sold to my client in 2020,” said Wieland, the lawyer representing Patil, Kothari and Boise Management. “The short version of it is that my client bought a 50% interest in this holding company in 2018 under a promissory note. The seller hired an attorney and under threat of litigation got my client to pay off that note.”
“That same attorney filed a lawsuit after the note had been paid off … saying that note was fraudulent.”
In the second lawsuit, Kothari sued four people for defamation in June 2022 after they had posted in a Facebook group that he was refusing to return sacred Hindu idols owned by the Hindu Educational Society of Idaho, or HESI. The society denied the claims and countersued Kothari, his spouse, Patil and 15 Idaho organizations they had organized.
Baranikumar Sivakumar, a Boise resident who co-founded the society in July 2020, met Kothari in 2021. The society agreed to rent a ballroom at the Ramada by Wyndham Boise with him to house the idols after a car crashed into a building the society used for religious and cultural services.
Patil organized a new religious nonprofit, Boise Hindu Temple Inc., 10 days after HESI moved its idols. But a dispute over how to use the space led Patil to send an email “demanding” that the society cease all events indefinitely, stop accepting donations, stop sending messages to the community and stop using the Ramada as its registered address.
Patil and Boise Hindu Temple kept the idols at the property and blocked members of HESI from entering the ballroom or retrieving them. Patil told the Statesman in 2023 that the idols were communal property and were never owned by HESI, though he would not show the Statesman proof of ownership or a donation slip.
That case was closed in November after the parties reached a settlement.
“That one was worked out amicably,” Wieland said. “The idol situation has been resolved.”
What’s next for Boise properties?
The project had all, or nearly all, of the approvals it needed when the lawsuits were filed, he said.
“We’re looking forward to moving on and redeveloping that property, which is really a good thing for the community and that neighborhood,” Wieland said. “I think everybody agrees that those hotels need to be redeveloped.”
Wieland noted in 2023 that the hotels were at the end of their productive lives and that nobody thought the hotels were the nicest in town. But the owners needed to keep prices low to make them profitable, which he said tended to attract more-difficult customers.
Data obtained by the Statesman from the Boise Police Department through a public records request showed the extent of those difficulties. Boise police were called to the three properties nearly 2,000 times between January 2020 and Oct. 7, 2023 — an average of about 44 calls per month.
The calls include 219 for welfare checks, 114 for suspicious subjects or vehicles, 57 for suicidal subjects or attempts, 54 for trespassing, 53 for fights, 46 for narcotics, 12 for fraud and nine for rape.
“These issues have been ongoing for years, and the only way to truly resolve them is to tear down the existing hotels, which is exactly what we’re trying to do,” Wieland said then.
The development plans would radically change the landscape. According to Gardner Co.’s 2023 plans, construction on the apartments, hotel and Hindu temple would work in three phases.
The developers would start with the 183-unit apartment complex, which would include 125 one-, 53 two-, and five three-bedroom units.
Thirty-seven of the units would also be reserved as workforce housing for those earning 100% or less of the area median income. In 2025, 100% of the area median income in Boise was $69,115 for a one-person household and $88,880 for a three-person household, according to the city of Boise.
To qualify as affordable housing, rents are capped at 30% of income. That means a one-person household would pay a maximum of $1,728 per month in rent and a three-person household would pay $2,222.
Area median income changes depending on the number of people in a household. A full list can be found by visiting boisecity.org and searching for “income guidelines.”
The second phase would see the demolition of the motels and construction of a new, five-story hotel that includes a restaurant, meeting space, lounge, board rooms and recreation space.
The final phase would focus on the two-story Hindu temple.
Bieter said Gardner Co. would meet with the owners over the next several weeks to discuss the project.
“We are pleased with the end of the litigation,” Bieter said by email. “Now that the project is fully entitled and the litigation resolved, we will be focused on the financing of the project.”
This story was originally published March 26, 2025 at 4:00 AM.
