A developer wants to replace affordable housing with student apartments. What Boise said
If their apartments are torn down, the tenants told the Boise Planning and Zoning Commission, they’ll have to spend months searching for affordable housing.
Two men testified that they would have to move back in with their parents. Several residents said they would end up homeless.
Tenants of the Ridenbaugh Place Apartments, a 55-year-old complex that provides 25 affordable homes to its residents, went before the commission Monday night to urge denial of a proposal to tear down their homes and replace them with nearly 200 apartments intended for Boise State University students.
After a public hearing that stretched into the early morning, the commission voted to recommend rejecting the proposal. The proposal now goes to the Boise City Council. A hearing date has not been set.
St. Louis-based Collegiate Development Group proposed 194 units with 537 bedrooms in a four-story building on the site at 2001 W. Boise Ave., on the south side of West Boise Avenue just west of South Protest Road.
The apartments would be close to Boise State University’s campus. The northeast corner of Boise Avenue and Protest (which becomes Beacon Street on the north side of Boise Avenue) has a 94-unit, five-story student apartment building called the Identity Boise Apartments that opened in 2018.
The proposed building would include more than 260 underground parking spaces for tenants. The developer anticipates that rents would average about $750 per bedroom, with studios going for about $1,000, the Statesman reported in October.
The developer has introduced a relocation package for residents that would include helping with moving expenses and helping to pay the first month’s rent at new housing. But residents’ most-repeated concern was a fear of what displacement would do to them.
Tearing down the existing housing “is not in the interest of the general welfare, and it is not in the interest of low-cost housing to have people become homeless or have to leave our community,” testified state Rep. John Gannon, a Democrat representing District 17, which includes the site.
Many of those who testified also took part in a rally Friday at the Ridenbaugh Place complex.
Commissioners Meredith Stead and Milt Gillespie voted to deny Collegiate Development’s proposal, while Commissioner Janelle Finfrock voted not to.
Commissioner Jennifer Stevens recused herself after the public testimony after learning her husband was part of the real estate company involved in the deal. Commissioners Bob Schafer and Jim Bratnober were not present.
“It seems to me it is in the city’s best interest to not do this until the BSU master plan is in and we’ve had a chance to talk about that,” Gillespie said.
The university is updating its 2015 master plan, which sets forth planned buildings and infrastructure, with what it calls a “minor amendment,” mostly to add a men’s NCAA baseball field on the southeast corner of campus. The revision includes the expansion of university-owned student housing on land across Boise Avenue from Ridenbaugh Place on what is now a parking lot.
Finfrock said she was leaning toward deferring the project rather than denying it. She said she felt the zoning was appropriate but she said she worried that the Ada County Highway District had not fully weighed in on the project.
The final decision — which was considered to be made in quorum because Stevens was still present even if she didn’t vote — was met with applause from those who sat through the commission’s seven-hour meeting to hear the results.
“I feel like maybe they listened to what is the right thing to do,” Kay Stone told the Idaho Statesman after the hearing ended. Stone, who said she lives a few blocks from the proposed project, did not testify but came to support her neighbors who did.
This story was originally published February 11, 2020 at 2:34 AM.
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