Boise Co-op moves forward on Treasure Valley expansion plans. What’s in store?
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- Boise Co-op eyes Northwest Meridian site for potential third grocery store location.
- City planning commission approved a plat request to prep site for possible development.
- Early plans include a 26,000-sq.-ft. store and two smaller commercial buildings; more detailed plans to come.
The Boise Co-op is moving forward with early plans to open a third Treasure Valley grocery store.
Buoyed by membership growth, the local grocery cooperative has been eyeing five sites for possible expansion, including one in Northwest Meridian, Senior Marketing Director Tyler Schnur told the Idaho Statesman in March. Now, a Northwest Meridian site, a 5.2-acre piece of vacant land at the northwest corner of Black Cat Road and Chinden Boulevard, may be being prepped for development — though nothing is final, Schnur said.
Preliminary application materials filed with city of Meridian in March indicated the grocery chain’s interest in building an almost 26,000-square-foot “Black Cat Boise Co-op,” plus two smaller “built to suit” buildings, at that location. At that time, Schnur said, no lease had been signed.
But it turned out that the parcel of land — whose assessed value jumped from $657,000 to nearly $3.4 million this year, according to the Ada County Assessor’s Office — had an existing preliminary plat on it from a 2018 subdivision plan and that plat expired. That meant that the land could not be developed until a new preliminary plat was submitted and then finalized, a city planning supervisor, Bill Parsons, explained to the Statesman by phone.
“My client has … entered into a contract to purchase this property, and that’s when this came up that effectively, it’s not a developable parcel until this subdivision (plat) is approved,” said Ben Semple, an architect with Rodney Evans and Partners, at a Planning and Zoning Commission hearing on Sept. 4.
The Boise architecture firm, which filed the preliminary materials for the Black Cat site in March, filed an application with the city in August to correct the lapse and get the site platted. The land in is a commercial “community business” zone, which is intended for “larger scale” retail and office, according to Meridian’s development code.
The site is the last piece of the Fairbourne subdivision. Semple said the platting process will “clean up” legal technicalities on the land. “This will legalize the parcel for development,” he said.
Early plans for grocery store on Black Cat take next step
Semple’s firm submitted a conceptual site plan showing three commercial buildings, including a nearly 26,000-square-foot building intended to be a grocery store, he said.
Semple did not disclose his client at the hearing, but preliminary renderings of the building referenced the Boise Co-op — as did one planning commissioner. During the hearing, Commissioner Jessica Perrault noted her observations of traffic at the Co-op at The Village at Meridian and said she hoped that having a second store in the city would allow some dispersal of traffic.
Perrault said the planning commission’s purview at the hearing was “really narrow” and did not include traffic considerations.
Parsons told the Statesman that most of the surrounding infrastructure has already been built, and the land is beholden to city code and previous approvals from the 2018 subdivision agreement.
The planning commission voted unanimously to recommend approval of the plat request, sending it to the City Council for final review, scheduled for October.
If the City Council approves the plat, then Semple’s client would submit more detailed plans, including related to the intensity of the use and traffic considerations. Those would have to be approved by city planning staff through a certificate-of-zoning-compliance process, Semple said.
Schnur told the Statesman by text Wednesday that “nothing has been finalized yet, so we’re not in a position to comment at this time.” He previously told the Statesman that the cooperative would wait for the “right place, right time” to expand.
KTVB earlier reported on the planning commission’s decision.
About the Boise Co-op
The Boise Co-op, known for its fair-trade and locally sourced products, has a grocery store at 888 W. Fort St. in Boise, which opened in 1996. It later added a wine shop and pet-supply store across the street, and in 2015, it expanded to a second store at The Village. Both stores are smaller than the one proposed on Black Cat.
The Co-op now has more than 50,000 members, according to its website. It’s known for membership discounts, organic and health-conscious ingredients and goods, and prepared foods like sandwiches, burritos and pizza.
According to a business-registration filing with the Idaho Secretary of State’s Office, the Co-op is incorporated as a nonprofit, but it is not a tax-exempt organization, Schnur has clarified.
This story was originally published September 12, 2025 at 4:00 AM.
