Boise Centre intends to buy a downtown property for $23M. For what?

Boise Centre may soon reach the Boise River.

The Greater Boise Auditorium District Board on Tuesday entered into an agreement to buy a 4⅛-acre lot with an aging warehouse on River Street between 10th and 11th streets, a seven-minute walk from its convention center in the heart of downtown.

The resolution is the first step toward buying the property, which was valued at $23.25 million, according to Auditorium District spokesperson Mary-Michael Rodgers.

While the deal would close sometime between June and September, Rodgers said, there’s no timeline for redeveloping the site, nor are there any specific plans for what to put there. But with California-based River Industrial Partners LLC looking to offload the properties soon, the Auditorium District was pressed to act quickly, Rodgers said.

Board Chair Kristin Muchow called the decision “an important milestone for the district, the city of Boise and the Treasure Valley.”

“It gives the Boise Auditorium District the opportunity to secure a site that will meet the needs of our district and our community for decades to come,” she said during a special meeting of the district’s board at Boise Centre.

The move is the largest for the Auditorium District since opened Boise Centre East in 2017. The district is funded mostly by a 5% tax on hotel stays.

Its board now plans to study “the optimal use for the site,” Rodgers said, as well as what the Auditorium District can afford to build on it.

The roughly 100,000-square-feet of warehouse space they’re buying is already larger than the Boise Centre’s 86,000 square feet of event space, which a consultant study released last fall found insufficient to meet demand for conventions in Idaho’s capital.

Boise Centre hosted 278 events and more than 170,812 people in 2025, according to a January report. That’s a new record for conventions — and one it may not be able to break at its existing home in downtown Boise. The Grove Plaza convention center is “at or near capacity,” according to the report from C.H. Johnson Consulting, and the hub lost 400 events in fiscal 2024 “due to space, date, and hotel limitations.”

“Without expansion, Boise risks losing high-value events to regional and national competitors,” the report stated.

The report suggested either adding event space or building a sports complex nearby. Both options are on the table as the board embarks on feasibility studies of the new location.

“For me, this is a perfect opportunity to shore up our future without a whole lot of risk to our current operations,” Board Director Jim C. Walker said. “It’s a no-brainer for me. ... This is probably going to be our only opportunity.”

After more than a year of searching, Executive Director Cody Lund said that only three lots in downtown Boise were large enough to consider, and none were contiguous with the district’s property by The Grove.

With Lund’s support, the board decided to pounce on one within walking distance of its main hub. While other options offered “incremental growth,” Lund said, the River Street property is “transformational,” “future-proofing” the district for years of growth.

The one-story warehouses at 1050 W. River St. and 504 S. 11th St. were built in 1960 and are leased to tenants, according to the Ada County Assessor’s Office.

“It became increasingly clear that this site … represents a unique opportunity for the district to consider,” Lund told the board.

The board aims to “get a development going that meets something in that [consultant] report,” Vice Chair Chase Erkins said, “We just have to figure out what that is.”

Regardless of what goes in on River Street, it will “spread downtown in that direction,” Erkins said, bringing activity to an industrial block by the Boise Greenbelt.

“There’s a lot more to be done,” he said, “But the parcel is a unique opportunity.”

Added Muchow: “Here we go.”

This story was originally published April 1, 2026 at 4:00 AM.