North 36th Street was supposed to get extended to Cartwright Road. What happened?

A plan to extend North 36th Street through the Boise Foothills to Cartwright Road has been abandoned.

In 2008, the Ada County Highway District approved the Cartwright Ranch planned community and a preliminary plat for the Neville Ranch subdivision, located along Dry Creek Road near Hidden Springs.

A condition of approval was that developers Cartwright Ranch LLC would extend and widen 36th Street. While the road was widened, it was never extended.

The developer was never able to obtain the land needed to extend the road. The property owner was unwilling to sell.

“As the development continued, it eventually came to light that the developer didn’t own the land needed to build the road,” ACHD spokeswoman Natalie Shaver said in an email to the Statesman. “ACHD can’t require that the developer buy the land, so the commission dropped that requirement.”

At the time of the original approval, the 36th Street improvements were part of ACHD’s five-year work program. There were conversations with the landowner about giving ACHD the right-of-way necessary to extend the street, but an agreement was never reached.

The developers of Cartwright Ranch had met ACHD’s conditions of approval for 274 residential lots. However, if the developers could not expand to 275 residential lots or more until 36th Street was extended. In May, 104 lots were occupied or under construction, and 170 lots were still vacant.

ACHD cannot legally require that the developer acquire property from a third-party and construct off-site improvements, which led the commission in May to drop the requirement.

Some residents worry about how keeping the road as it is now will affect other neighborhood roads such as Harrison Boulevard and 15th and 13th streets.

This story was originally published July 31, 2019 at 5:01 PM.