Tacos, lofts, art & cargo containers: SE Garden City is changing. What’s next?
If you’ve found yourself in the Garden City’s so-called “East End” neighborhood lately, you might have noticed an unmistakable enthusiasm plastered on people’s faces.
You could say the area that forms Garden City’s southeastern terminus, wedged between Chinden Boulevard, the Boise River, 32nd Street and 36th Street, is going through a modern renaissance. After years of hope, construction projects are going vertical and new businesses, breweries and restaurants are drawing hungry, eager crowds.
Nearly every day you can find people chowing down on al pastor tacos and draining pints of Mexican lager at the newly opened Rosa taco shop at 214 E. 34th St., across the street from workers building tall luxury town houses and condos.
Hordes flock to the area seemingly daily for popular hotspots like the surf-themed Yardarm bar, Barbarian Brewing, Telaya Wine Co. and the Push & Pour coffee shop.
Brennan Conroy, co-owner of Push & Pour, said the area is at a tipping point, thanks in large part to the couple who opened Rosa in February: David and Lizzy Rex, the brains behind Boise restaurants like Wylder, Certified Kitchen + Bakery and Percy. Rosa shares a building with Push & Pour.
“There’s so many people,” Conroy said by phone. “We’re stoked.”
Long-time local developer Hannah Ball said there’s been an sense of excitement running through the neighborhood, known as the Surel Mitchel Live-Work-Create District, since the restaurant opened.
“The neighbors seem happy, the residents seem happy,” she said. “The neighborhood is on the up-and-up.”
For years, the neighborhood has been the site of speculation, grand development ideas and a flickering hope for a grungy, art-focused area that can’t be found anywhere else in the Treasure Valley. Many of those dreams seem closer than ever.
But it’s not a perfect story. Vacant lots still dot the neighborhood like blank canvas, with many of the proposed developments fading from sight or chucked in the waste bin. Other ideas have hung on despite an economic rollercoaster since the COVID-19 pandemic.
“The development potential is still really far from being complete,” said Garden City resident Jason Jones, who has had development plans for the area for years with Ball.
Jones said that as more successful businesses move in, like Barbarian Brewing, Coiled Wines and a new Bardenay location, it gives legitimacy to redevelopment plans.
“Part of what stops development is lack of confidence,” he said. “The risk becomes less as more and more businesses are successful.”
Tucked in near downtown Boise, along the Boise River Greenbelt and Whitewater Park, across from Esther Simplot Park and near the proposed College of Western Idaho campus, Jones is confident in the area’s future.
“It’s all going to get developed,” he said.
With all the fervor hitting the banks of the Boise River, the Idaho Statesman looked into what is, or may be, going up in one of Garden City’s most lively areas.
1. A new market, and a New Orleans-inspired building?
Ball, the founder of Urban Land Development and a former Garden City mayoral candidate, has long dreamed of developing the area, which she has affectionately tried to coin as Garden City’s East End. The Idaho Statesman reported in 2018 that she owned the equivalent of about 40 5,000-square-foot lots in the area, of which 12 were on 34th Street.
She wanted to redevelop the lots into a dense, urban playground for artists and entrepreneurs that could rival Hyde Park in Boise’s North End or Bown Crossing in Southeast Boise, according to prior Statesman reporting.
“We want to blow Hyde Park out of the water,” she said then.
Many of those plans — such as building 203 apartments and town houses and over 116,000 feet of commercial space — have dissolved, though not for a lack of trying. Permitting and opposition to her ideas, either from the community or city staff or the City Council, have hampered some of her attempts.
Ball jettisoned some of her land holdings and shifted or scrapped many of those plans over the years. But she’s still eager to see the area change, and still has plans moving forward.
Her latest attempt? A bodega-type market with beverages and snacks at 215 E. 36th St., on the corner of 34th and Carr streets across from Push & Pour and Rosa. Ball said she wants to provide a place for people to be able to pop in to buy Corn Nuts and Sprite and hang out.
Ball said she hoped her store, the 34th Street Market, would come online by the end of May.
She said she’s trying her hand at building commercial after some difficult experiences trying to build residential or mixed-use buildings there.
“When you do a commercial building, people are all excited,” she said. “You do a multifamily and they hate you.”
Despite the difficulties, she’s still aiming for a multifamily development on 34th Street. In 2022 she proposed two three-story buildings in a New Orleans-inspired development each with eight living spaces and eight storefront or work spaces called the 34th Street Quarter.
The development was designed to feel like a modern industrial version of New Orleans’s French Quarter, including wraparound balconies on the second and third floors, according to the application.
The Garden City Council approved that plan in 2022 with two buildings, though Ball is now hoping to build only one.
2. Shipping container park plan still alive
To the immediate east of the 34th Street Quarter is a development that Jones has been planning for several years with Ball: a shipping container park with apartments and work spaces called Park 33.
The original plan called for using 35 cargo containers and arranging them into small spaces for studios, retail shops and two apartments, according to prior Statesman reporting. Jones first proposed the idea in 2019, but faced opposition from the Garden City Council which denied the plans.
Tensions between Jones and the city escalated when the City Council chose to ban shipping container projects after more had cropped up, saying they cheapened the city’s look and were not built to last, according to prior Statesman reporting. Several nearby businesses feature shipping containers — including the Yardarm bar less than a quarter-mile from Jones’s property.
Jones, who had shipping containers on his property, refused to move the containers or build a required eight-foot privacy fence around them as outlined in city code.
After multiple warnings and a court battle, Jones was sentenced to five days in jail plus two years of probation for failing to erect a privacy fence.
Jones kept trying with Park 33, and in 2022 a judge sided with Jones and overruled the city’s denial — allowing the development to move forward with seven live-work spaces.
Jones said that he has kept the permit up to date and still hopes to build it once he works through some details with the Ada County Highway District, though it could still be a few years away.
“We are still moving forward,” he said by phone.
3. Luxury living at Casino Beach
Another development called Casino Beach at Garden City is well on its way with construction dominating the northeastern end of 34th Street.
Marketed as a luxury community and “waterfront oasis in the heart of the city,” Casino Beach plans 16,000 square feet of retail, restaurants, creative office space and 30 homes, according to a sales brochure.
According to Michael Slavin, cofounder of Boise’s Einhorn construction and architecture firm that is a part of the development team, the 11-building Casino Beach includes two standalone four-story town houses, with the rest of the units split among condominiums, apartments and town houses. Construction on some of the homes has already finished, with more coming online until at least April 2026.
The development includes two restaurant spaces, multiple storefronts and a riverfront bar named Tower 34, Slavin said, with the intent of having storefronts along 34th akin to Hyde Park.
He estimated that the total development cost for Casino Beach was over $30 million, and that units would range in price from $840,000 to $3.2 million. One of the four-story town houses is listed on Zillow for $3 million.
Slavin said the development group comprises a private group of friends working with several Boise-area architects, including Pivot North, Slichter Ugrin and ALC Architecture.
Conroy, the co-owner of Push & Pour, said Slavin’s project was adding to the enthusiasm running through the neighborhood and the never expected such a development would come for the area when he first moved into the Push & Pour space about seven years ago.
“I knew it was a cool space… but I didn’t think there would be $3 million houses across the street,” Conroy said. “There’s crazy houses in Eagle and crazy houses in the Foothills, but what those guys are doing is pretty bonkers.”
4. More Garden City apartments incoming
Crews are also working on a four-story, 24-unit apartment building about 350 feet to the northwest of Casino Beach at 305 and 309 E. 36th Street.
That project was originally proposed by Spokane-based architecture firm Trek Architecture and 36th Spokane LLC, which listed Spokane developers Jordan Tampien and Matt Goodwin as governors, according to Idaho Secretary of State business records. Tampien and Goodwin have had several projects in Boise, including redeveloping the old Dutch Goose bar on State Street into apartments.
The property is now owned by a company belonging to Meridian gastroenterologist Christopher Hammerle, according to Ada County Assessor records.
It’s not clear when the 36th Street Apartments might open or what rents may look like. Hammerle did not respond to a voicemail left with his office.
5. Apartments, hotel and town houses by Push & Pour
Hammerle is also listed as the managing member of another company, SoUL34 LLC, which owns several lots adjacent to Push & Pour and Rosa. Garden City approved a three-building development called Shavasana Urban Living with 13 apartments, nine hotel rooms and six town houses on those lots in 2021.
Those plans could still be alive. Hammerle and his business partner, Caleb Creagan, applied for a one-year time extension on the application in July after buying the site and plans from Boise’s Realm Venture Group in May, according to city records.
Another plan from Tampien and Goodwin, however, appears to be dead. The duo planned to redevelop the northern corner of the 34th and Clay street intersection into a two-story building with a ground-floor location of Spokane’s Brick West Brewing Co., a live-work unit and four apartments on the upper-level, according to the development application.
Tampien did not immediately return an email requesting comment. A phone number for his Spokane real estate company ended without an option to leave a voicemail.
The property was listed for sale in 2024 for $785,000 and has yet to find a buyer, according to Redfin.
6. New plans for Garden City’s vacant land
Much of the land further down 34th Street is still vacant lots — much of it owned by Bonnie Layton, a senior planner based inout of the Meridian office of international consulting and engineering firm NV5.
Layton said she has plans for the area, but it is still in the early stages. She owns five lots with her partners that would be developed first and several other lots that could be developed later. Her employer is not involved in her development plans for the area, she said.
“There’s definitely plans in the works,” she said by phone. “We’re just kind of working through some details.”
Layton said she and her partners haven’t yet submitted an application to the city and couldn’t comment, though “I think you’re going to see something in the next couple of months.”
The area could be on the cusp of more development, Layton said, with a unique opportunity that can’t be found in other parts of the Treasure Valley. The neighborhood is in the center of much activity and has easy access to the Greenbelt and getting into downtown Boise, she said.
“There’s not a lot of opportunity to develop along or near the river like that,” Layton said.
This story was originally published April 29, 2025 at 4:00 AM.
