‘Soul of our community’ not for sale:’ say those against proposed Garden City project
For over a decade, Martin Evans has lived in a mobile home near the Boise River Greenbelt in Garden City. But now a proposed hotel and apartment complex there is threatening to cast a shadow over his neighborhood.
In October, Las Vegas developer Michael Talbott applied to Garden City to build the Boardwalk — a 7-acre development with two apartment buildings and a 9-story hotel that would be the city’s tallest building. The site, located between Veterans Memorial Parkway and 40th Street, is home to a handful of mobile homes and cottage houses. Evans’ home is next door.
“We have concerns about people in the mobile homes — what is going to happen to them?” he asked at a meeting of Garden City’s Design Review Committee this week.
Design approval is the first step a developer must go through before he brings the project to the Planning and Zoning Commission, which will recommend to the City Council whether to approve the project and any land-use changes.
Talbott has said his team plans to help current residents find new places to live and will give them ample notice before they are evicted.
Evans’ worries illustrate concerns among a small group of neighbors who have mobilized against developers who have begun to discover this small city’s prime location on the Boise River. They ask: As newcomers seek to build up Garden City, will the city’s current residents be forgotten?
Displacement of low-income mobile-home residents is one concern. Another is maintaining neighborhood character.
James Herbert owns a house on 40th Street across from one of the planned apartment buildings, 406 Place. He told the committee that the developers didn’t take their neighbors into consideration.
“We ask you don’t sell the soul of our community for tax dollars,” he said.
Herbert’s chief concern was with the height of 406 Place, which he said should be lowered from its proposed 70 feet to take into account the nearby one-story houses.
In the end, the Design Review Committee asked the developer to come back with revised plans that would mitigate the impact on the neighbors.
“It doesn’t seem like there’s much done to transition this project to a residential neighborhood,” said committee member Brett Labrie, a partner at Lindgren:Labrie Architecture.
But Chad Weltzin of Boise’s Erstad Architects, the Boardwalk’s designer, said that not all developments should have to taper at the edge, creating a “pyramid” style effect.
The problem, he noted, is common for any area in transition: Right now, reducing the number of stories on the edge of the property might make sense, but what about in the future when a developer wants to build a tall building next door? Will he, too, have to create a building set back at the edge to respond to the design of his neighbor?
Derek Hurd, a commission member and founding principal of Gravitas Residential Design, agreed with Weltzin.
“It’s a well-designed project,” Hurd said, pointing out how the building’s form reflected the undulations of the Boise River.
He added that the tall trees the developer would plant there, as well as the building’s setback from the sidewalk, would act as a sufficient buffer.
Parking provisions?
A third concern is parking. Neighbors questioned the plan for a parking garage that would take up the first three floors of 406 Place. Unlike most fights about parking, though, these neighbors argued there was too much parking, not too little.
Herbert also pointed out that cars would enter the garage from 40th Street, a residential street lined by tall, craning trees. He argued that the 184 spots the parking garage greatly outnumber the 38 units in the building — and thus would provide parking for guests of the restaurant and hotels, adding traffic along 40th.
Architects added those extra spots at the request of Garden City, Weltzin said. Overall, the entire Boardwalk project contains 461 parking spots — 200 underneath the main Boardwalk apartments and retail space, 184 in the 406 Place garage, and 77 surface spaces.
“That to me seems overparked,” said commission member Maureen Gresham, who also manages the Ada County Highway District’s Commuteride program.
The developer offered to remove some parking from the building.
And that, in turn, could help 406 Place blend in with nearby houses.
“If there wasn’t so much parking here, there would be an opportunity to make it more transitional,” Labrie said.
The project will be back before the Design Review Committee on Monday, Jan. 20.
This story was originally published December 6, 2019 at 6:00 AM.
