Some Boise developments are tipping toward foreclosure. What’s happening?
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- High interest rates and vacancy forced Boise projects into pausing or foreclosure.
- Developers like Kal Pacific and Galena Fund face legal and financial setbacks.
- Experts don't see widespread increase despite high-stakes foreclosures.
Real estate development can be a risky business.
Developers have to find and buy a property, then push their idea through a tedious and difficult permitting process — often with vitriolic public opposition — before going to investors to ask for a few million. And that’s before construction even begins.
Many ideas never get to the construction stage after getting skewered by the public and guillotined by difficult market conditions. And more developments could be on the chopping block amid high interest rates, declining land values and a continued shortage of construction labor.
Several proposed developments in the Boise area have teetered on the edge of foreclosure, with public auction dates creeping forward for owners such as Spokane developer Jordan Tampien and his partner, restaurateur Matt Goodwin.
Tampien and Goodwin bet big on the Boise market in late 2020 and early 2021, but high interest rates and increasing vacancy rates forced them to press pause on several projects in multiple locations, Tampien said by email.
Vacancy rates are an important metric in real estate, showing how many properties are occupied by tenants compared to the total properties. A high vacancy rate can indicate that there’s too much supply of a certain kind of property in the market — meaning owners may have to sell a property at a lower price or that interested lessees have more attractive options to choose from.
Boise has seen three consecutive quarters of slower leasing activity and higher vacancy rates for retail properties, according to a first quarter market report from Cushman and Wakefield, an international commercial real estate firm headquartered in Chicago.
Tampien and Goodwin’s planned redevelopment of the old Crescent “No Lawyers” Bar and Grill at 5500 W. Franklin Road is one such property that has struggled.
Tampien and Goodwin bought the property in 2021 and had planned to turn it into two restaurants and two three-story apartment buildings. But after building 48 apartments behind the bar and grill, the duo got stuck with the restaurant space when they couldn’t persuade a lender to keep it alive.
The duo defaulted on payments to their existing lender, Socotra Capital, for $1.8 million, according to a public notice in April. Goodwin and Tampien’s company, Franklin Spokane LLC, had failed to make monthly payments since July 2024.
“We never could get traction with the restaurant after the renovation post-Covid,” Tampien said. “We wanted to redevelop it but are running into the same hurdles of high interest rates, vacancy and high cost to build.”
Goodwin and Tampien could still yank the property out of the foreclosure process if they pay the amount owed. Otherwise it is scheduled to go out to public auction at 10 a.m. on Sept. 8, on the front steps of the Ada County Courthouse at 200 W. Front St. in Boise.
If it is sold, Goodwin and Tampien would still have six months under Idaho law to reclaim the property if they pay off the lender with interest.
In late 2020 and early 2021, Tampien and Goodwin also bought lots in Garden City that were to become a brewery and apartments, along with the Dutch Goose bar and restaurant on State Street. They planned to turn the Dutch Goose into a gastropub, then raze and replace it with a 43-unit apartment complex.
“Go big or go home,” Goodwin told the Idaho Statesman in 2021.
But the duo scrapped the brewery idea in Garden City. The lot is now controlled by a trust for Michael Kirk Bulick, according to records maintained by the Ada County Assessor’s Office. Meridian gastroenterologist Christopher Hammerle is building the 24-unit apartment building.
“The cost to build in this location combined with the cost of the land required that we consolidate and sell off those parcels,” Tampien said by email. “For example, the Garden City apartments initially appraised for $9 million, and the most recent appraisal after completion was $6 million.”
The Dutch Goose at 3515 W. State St., closed in 2020. In 2021, Tampien and Goodwin re-opened the restaurant as the State Street Kitchen & Drinkery gastropub. It lasted for just over a year-and-a-half before shutting down. The property then briefly went up for sale in August 2024 before that listing was removed and a permit to demolish the old bar for the proposed apartments was submitted to the city of Boise.
Jordan Onley, a senior project manager and architect for Spokane’s Trek Architecture, submitted a second application-extension request for the project in January, saying it still needed reviews by Veolia, the water company; and by the Ada County Highway District. The city granted the extension until July 31. Under a city ordinance, no application can be extended more than twice.
According to Tampien, the Dutch Goose property is “permit ready and plans are still to move forward with building a 40-unit apartment building.”
California developer faces changing Boise market
Tampien and Goodwin aren’t the only ones.
Kal Pacific, a California developer, has also seen some of its holdings go into foreclosure proceedings, though the company’s principal, Don Veasey, says he is solving the problem and does not expect them to go to auction.
The company defaulted on payments to its lender, GF Capital Group, for $3.7 million on three parcels at 580 N. Cole Road and at 7325 and 7313 W. Denton St., near the Boise Towne Square mall, according to a public notice in March.
Those vacant properties were to become home to a five-story, 136-unit apartment building with ground-floor retail, a property-management office and self-storage units, according to prior Statesman reporting. The building would have wrapped around the northern and eastern side of a Mattress Firm store by the Interstate 184 Connector’s Cole Road exit.
The properties are scheduled to be sold for cash at a public auction at 10 a.m. on July 28 on the front steps of the Ada County Courthouse.
“We are actively working towards finalizing the contract with our builder and addressing the foreclosure issue in collaboration with our lender,” Veasey said by email. “This situation has presented some unexpected challenges and raised concerns about our agreements. However … we are making progress, and I do not anticipate any foreclosure occurring.”
Kal Pacific has also delayed developing a 358-unit apartment, office and commercial space at 2850 W. Fletcher St. in Boise’s West End, next to the Symposion Bar.
Plans for development included three buildings ranging from four to seven stories. Apartments would have filled two buildings on the upper five floors with offices in a four-story building along the Boise River Greenbelt.
The Boise Design Review Commission, which first approved the development in 2021, denied a time extension that Kal Pacific sought for it in November.
The commissioners said they wanted a “fresh set of eyes” on the project since it had taken so long to get off the ground, and because the city had approved it well before Boise’s new zoning code went live in December 2023.
Grant Seaman, the founder and CEO of Seattle’s HURAA Architecture that has worked on the plans, told the Idaho Statesman in March that it was still on the table. The development team, he said, was working with the Ada County Highway District on technical details before moving forward and applying for another permit.
“Once our friends at ACHD get everything finished, then in theory we could quickly get a building permit,” Seaman said then. “(It) all kind of hinges on ACHD.”
Boise area properties struggle
The difficult market has come for other projects too.
In Meridian, a proposed 350-apartment development went into foreclosure after its developer, Boise’s Galena Opportunity Fund, failed to pay contractors, according to prior Statesman reporting. The development, called Union 93, stopped mid-construction and has sat vacant across from Meridian City Hall ever since.
One of Gelena’s investors pulled out of the project in 2022, then contractors started filing liens and lawsuits for an estimated $17.3 million in unpaid work. In December, Galena owed $22 million to five contractors, with the property heading toward a public auction.
At the Boise Towne Square mall, about a quarter of a mile from the Kal Pacific properties that are facing foreclosure, another project also appears to be belly-up. In 2021, North Carolina’s Madison Capital Group bought the former Sears property at the Boise Towne Square mall and planned to demolish it to build 246 apartments. The units would have been spread out among three four-story buildings.
The property went up for sale with Boise real estate agency TOK Commercial in May 2024 for $8 million, later dropped to $7.5 million. The property is still listed.
Is Boise seeing an uptick in foreclosures?
Experts say that while a string of foreclosures might seem concerning, there isn’t a trend yet in the Boise area. Some foreclosures are normal in commercial development.
Brigham J. Lundberg, the successor trustee assigned to both the Kal Pacific and Crescent Bar foreclosures, said he hadn’t noticed an uptick in foreclosures in the area. Sometimes, he said, it might look like there’s a trend when it’s just coincidental that properties are near each other.
Wes Jost, senior director of Zions Bank’s Idaho Real Estate Banking Group, said he hadn’t noticed an overall uptick in foreclosures, either.
“I think the industry has done a really good job of making sure they haven’t over-lent into it,” Jost said by phone. “But short answer, no. We’re not really seeing it.”
According to Attom, a real estate and property data service, total foreclosure filings across the state were up nearly 27% in February 2025 compared with February 2024. Foreclosure starts, meaning properties where at least one public notice was issued, jumped 160% in February 2025 compared with February 2024.
Take this with a grain of salt. The small number of foreclosures can make those percentages seem jaw-dropping. For instance, that 160% jump in foreclosure starts represents an increase of seven filings statewide.
There was a spike of total foreclosure filings in Ada County in June 2024, jumping to 73 from 13 the month prior, according to Attom data. In the eight months that followed, filings averaged just over 18 per month.
Nationally, the lending market for commercial and multifamily development is actually improving, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association.
“The steady rise in commercial and multifamily mortgage debt highlights sustained investor confidence, with institutional lenders … continuing to expand their presence,” the association said in a March report.
This story was originally published June 24, 2025 at 4:00 AM.
