Boise doubles down on $140M housing ‘campus’ by BSU. When would it break ground?
Boise’s urban renewal agency ramped up its support for the city’s housing overhaul near Boise State University, committing $16 million to help finance the city’s biggest low-income housing effort to date.
Monday’s resolution from the Capital City Development Corp. would help pay for a key piece of the 360-apartment Capitol Campus between South Capitol Boulevard and Lusk Street. The agency would buy 250 spaces of a 330-space parking garage that Utah developer J. Fischer Cos. is building as part of the roughly $140 million mixed-use development.
The contribution would bring the urban renewal agency’s outlay to about $19.4 million over the remaining 13 years of its Shoreline Urban Renewal District. CCDC would spend an estimated $3.4 million in tax revenue on streetscape improvements.
The purchase offsets the cost of project’s parking requirement and “helps make affordable housing financially feasible” on the three-acre city-owned lot at 1025 S. Capitol Blvd, according to CCDC Project Manager Corrie Brending. That’s critical considering the scale of the project, which calls for 12,000 square feet of commercial space for stores and restaurants at street level.
The lot is “going to be a huge deal” for employers in what’s “probably the worst parked neighborhood in the city,” said CCDC Commissioner and Boise City Council Member Jimmy Hallyburton.
The Lusk District, which sits between the Boise Depot, Boise River and Ann Morrison Park, has drawn development interest for its central location, near downtown and Boise State. But it’s still undergoing an awkward transitioning from its industrial past toward what the city envisions as a housing-dense neighborhood full of public-facing small businesses.
“This area still needs a lot of public infrastructure investment,” Hallyburton said.
Boise has long maintained low-income housing at the Capitol Boulevard site, though the apartments had fallen into disrepair, Melinda McGoldrick, senior manager in the city’s Housing and Community Development Department, told the Statesman in an interview in early February. By then, all residents had left the apartment complex and found new places to live, either within the city’s portfolio or in private rentals, McGoldrick said.
J. Fisher is partnering with the city to build new apartments affordable on average to tenants making 60% or less of the Boise’s area median income. That’s $1,124 per month for an individual or $1,605 for a family of four, per Boise’s affordability guidelines.
On Monday, Jake Wood, managing director for affordable housing at J. Fischer, said his team was still working on the project’s design, though it will likely be two buildings separated by an open-air public walkway. Wood expects to have “something to show” in the next few weeks ahead of an April hearing before the Boise City Council.
If all goes to plan, Wood said J. Fisher could break ground in October. Construction would likely take three years, according to CCDC documents. The apartments would open to residents in October 2029.
The full parking lot will go into the city’s ParkBoi inventory, with proceeds split between CCDC and J. Fisher proportional to ownership. The developer will take a design fee for the garage but is otherwise selling the spaces at cost, according to Wood.