Affordable housing stalled on this West End lot. Here’s what’s coming instead

The Boise City Council on Tuesday cleared the way for a new cluster of town homes near the city’s Whitewater Park, the latest in a rapid swoop of redevelopment along the West End riverfront.

Salt Lake City developer Gardner Group plans to build the 66-unit Rivergate Townhomes on a 3-acre cluster of open lots between West Moore Street and North Whitewater Park Boulevard, due east of Esther Simplot Pond.

Between applications and approved plans, that puts more than 550 units in the pipeline within a half-mile of the Main Street bridge into Garden City.

The council’s unanimous decision to rezone and subdivide the dogleg of land into smaller parcels follows the guidance of the city’s Planning and Zoning Commission. In March, that board voted 6-1 to approve the application with a handful of conditions, including an agreement that Gardner would work with the Ada County Highway District to calm traffic around the new construction.

Affordable housing ‘impossible’ on Whitewater lot

The decision also signals the end of the Boise City Housing Authority’s involvement in the site. The Housing Authority has owned the parcels since at least 2018, according to Ada County property records.

Geoffery Wardle, an attorney for Gardner, told P&Z that the housing authority plans to offload the land after stalled attempts to build affordable housing on the property.

“There have been a variety of applications, prior attempts to develop this site for housing consistent with their mission,” Wardle said of the Housing Authority’s stymied plans. “However, due to market factors and other reasons, they ultimately have decided to sell the property with the intention and desire that the focus be housing. And that is what my applicant, Gardner Group, has come forward with.”

Before the P&Z, Wardle put the price tag of Gardner’s planned homes between $500,000 and $800,000 — though, he noted, the change to MX-1 zoning for town homes allows for smaller properties, easier financing for buyers and a “marginal degree of cost savings for the ultimate consumer.”

Affordable prices are “just not workable at this site,” Wardle said, which is why the Housing Authority is moving on.

“I am at a total loss in this market about what we do for affordability,” Wardle told P&Z in March.

On Tuesday, Council Member Jordan Morales lamented that the city could not get “Capital-A affordable housing” on the lot, but recognized the limitations.

“There were specific aspects of this property that made it impossible for (the Housing Authority) to do the math,” he said. Morales lamented Idaho’s scant support for housing — particularly that the Legislature never dedicated money into Idaho’s decades-old Housing Trust Fund to directly support affordable projects.

The town homes’ price tag previously caused P&Z Commissioner Tony Torres “heartburn,” though he too acknowledged there was little the city could do to force affordable units into the project.

Under Idaho law, cities can “incentivize” deed-restricted construction, “but they can’t require it,” he said. Still, he hoped that building the new town homes would free up less expensive ones downmarket.

Neighbors concerned homes will ‘dominate’ district

Homeowners around the Whitewater lot had their own hesitations about the plan.

Members of the West End Neighborhood Association voiced concerns over the height of the new town homes, the design’s fragmented green space and the number of cars it would drive into the thin streets north of Main.

“They will dominate the neighborhood. They will dominate the streets,” said Jessie Roberts, whose father lives next door. “I just don’t think it’s serving what I’m hearing the people in Boise really want. People want green space. People want starter homes. Those are two things that are really lacking, and if we’re filling everything with high-end town homes, there will be nothing left for green space, or for starter homes.”

But Associate Planner Doug Exton told the council that this area is already one earmarked for housing density. Wardle added that the town home concept was extensively worked through with city staff — and not the developer’s original intent for the property.

“Infill is hard,” Torres said in March. “Having said that, this project checks just about all the boxes of what the city’s trying to accomplish with the modern zoning code. It is a location that is near transit. The State Street bus network is very nearby. It is near the Greenbelt. It is near parks. It is close to downtown. It is an area where the city anticipates … more infill development over time.”

Boise’s West End a riverfront hotspot

Much of the infill is already in the pipeline.

The Rivergate property sits about a half-mile up Whitewater Park Boulevard from the College of Western Idaho’s forthcoming River District Campus, which broke ground in June. The wide-ranging project calls for 216 apartments, storefronts, a hotel and a parking garage alongside the classroom building. Much of that has already been approved by the city, including CWI’s four-story, 101,000-square-foot academic building at the intersection of Whitewater Park Boulevard and Main Street. The school hopes to hold classes at its Boise outpost starting in the fall of 2027.

That timeline should align nicely with the completion of Roundhouse’s two-stage Finch apartment complex, already under construction across Main Street.

Finch I is on track to open at the end of July, Patrick Boel, Roundhouse’s managing director of development, told the Idaho Statesman in February. The second building is slated to break ground on a one-year build in June. Those projects rely heavily on federal support. In exchange, they’re required to keep a percentage of units under the market rate. The Finch buildings have a few market-rate apartments, but others are well below, with one-, two- and three-bedroom units aimed at renters making 60%, 50%, 45% and 30% of Boise’s median income. Boel expects income-restricted rents to range from $900 per month for the cheapest one-bedroom to $1,900 for the priciest three-bedroom.

Once done, Roundhouse aims to turn its focus to the rest of its roughly 6-acre property between Main and Fairview. Plans for the rest of the site are still in the ether, Boel said, but will likely include a mix of market-rate housing and commercial development, along with a deliberate attempt at “placemaking” — that is, designed to foster a welcoming and distinct public space.

“This end of town has struggled a lot,” Boel told the Statesman in February. “There’s no sense of place — at least not yet. We want (this property) to be a catalyst for that.”

One street south, a California developer is reviving plans at 27th and Fairview Avenue. In December, Urban Capital Partners of Murrieta, California, filed an application to build 185 apartments at 2850 W. Fletcher St. between Fairview Avenue and the I-184 Connector west of the Boise River. The preliminary plan calls for five stories of apartments atop two floors of covered parking. The first floor would also have space for storefronts, Seattle architect Grant Seaman stated in the application.