3 buildings, 300 apartments planned for growing Garden City riverside neighborhood
For over a year, neighbors near Veterans Memorial Parkway and Adams Street in Garden City have woken up to the sound of drills buzzing and hammers pounding.
They won’t get a break from the construction noise anytime soon.
Developers have proposed three new apartment complexes for the area that would, in total, add 300 units to the growing neighborhood, which has added dozens of apartments, townhouses and quadplexes and a charter school, all just since 2015.
Parkway Station developer to keep building
Most of the construction along 42nd Street north of Adams Street is part of Parkway Station, a mixed-use neighborhood developed by the Galena Opportunity Fund.
“We see multifamily apartments as a necessary housing component that isn’t necessarily being delivered in areas really accessible to downtown Boise and downtown Meridian,” said Galena’s president, Bill Truax, by phone. “We see a lot being created on the periphery in greenfield areas.”
Truax has two more apartment projects he hopes to add to Parkway Station that will rent at market-rate.
The first, Lot 50, is a six-story 140-unit building with 152,000 square feet of residential space and 8,500 square feet of retail, located at the northwest intersection of Adams and 42nd Street. It would also include a 77-stall ground-floor parking lot.
The focal point of the development is its 17,000-square-foot interior courtyard, which will also include a vertical farming area with growing spots allocated to each apartment in the building. Saint Alphonsus has said it will provide urban farming classes for residents of the project, according to Truax’s application.
The Garden City Design Review committee approved the project in March. Truax said he hopes to break ground in June.
Truax has also applied to build a second building, called The River, at Adams and East 43rd streets. The four-story building would add 70 apartments wrapped around an interior 158-stall parking garage. The building would also feature a fitness room, yoga room, animal wash area and rental storage units, as well as a meeting room, managers office, mail and parcel rooms and bike storage.
The commercial aspect of The River will be smaller than that of Lot 50’s — around 2,000 square feet. Truax said a bodega might go there.
The projects together are slated to cost about $42 million, Truax said.
Boardwalk developers
Fresh off approval of a 7-acre hotel and apartment project called the Boardwalk on the other side of Veteran’s Memorial Parkway, Michael Talbott is back with another project before Garden City. This time, he’s proposing a five-story, 90 unit apartment building, separated into two parts, connected via skybridge.
The smaller building will contain a clubhouse and leasing office, with four stories of apartments above. The larger building will include two stories of parking, with with three stories of apartments above, as well as a third floor pool, deck and fitness center.
The project, located at 411 E. 43rd St., would take over 2 acres of land currently occupied by the Dee Mar Mobile Home Park.
Talbott did not respond to a request for comment.
Growing Garden City battles gentrification
To Garden City Mayor John Evans, the projects that Truax and Talbott are building fit in well with Garden City’s overall plans for the city.
“It’s providing a variety of housing and a range of housing costs,” he said by phone. “It’s meeting a demand for close-in access to the Greenbelt and the bus line.”
It’s well-established that high-density housing is a more environmentally sustainable way for cities to grow, as it decreases reliance on car-based transportation.
But the this housing type does come with a sacrifice.
As real estate along the Boise River Greenbelt becomes increasingly desirable, more and more of the mobile home parks in the area have come under threat.
Already, the former Tammy’s Riverside Park has dissolved to make way for Parkway Station. The apartments that have come in their wake are far more pricey — and renting for around $1,200 per month for a one-bedroom unit.
Truax has said that he will help to pay to relocate those forced out by his project.
“We’re working with them to give them as much time as possible to relocate,” he said.
Evans said the city can’t control private real estate markets and stop the displacement of low-income people.
“How the city really handles that is more in what the city does not do than what the city proactively does,” he said.
For example, the city doesn’t have restrictive zoning in place along the riverside, unlike some of Boise’s surrounding suburbs, which can make it difficult to build higher-density, affordably-priced housing. Rather, Garden City continuously approves smaller housing units — like townhouses, cottage-style houses and low-income tax credit housing.
“We do not zone workforce housing out by creating zoning codes that make it impossible,” Evans said. “We have a higher percentage of lower-cost housing in Garden City ... than anywhere else in the Treasure Valley. Everyone’s welcome.”
And with more people coming into the Treasure Valley, it’s likely that low-density trailer parks will continue to be replaced with multistory apartments and townhouses.
“The city isn’t in a position to say, no, you can’t use your private property according to our code,” Evans said.
City’s reinvestment in area helps spur growth
It is true, though, that the growth north of Adams Street couldn’t have happened without the city’s intervention.
Over five years ago, before the Trailwinds low-income apartments were built, the city added larger sewer and water lines along the riverside. This allowed for the capacity required to build high-density housing.
That infrastructure was funded in large part by Garden City’s urban renewal district, which invested over $8 million in the area over its lifetime.
“We’ve spent a lot down there,” Evans said.
He said that now, sewer costs around the city aren’t rising as quickly as before, since there are now more people paying into the system.
COVID-19 not slowing down projects
While many commercial real estate projects have been put on hold or slowed down by the coronavirus, Truax said that he’s in a position to move forward with his projects, starting with Lot 50.
With the possibility of in-migration further increasing after COVID-19 as people take on more remote work or seek to live in smaller cities, building infill will become more pressing, he said.
“We are going to move out of this COVID arrangement a little more quickly than other markets,” Truax said. “We’re also going to see people moving in. Our hope is that we continue to see more development focused in the inner core rather than outside, to preserve some of the farmland.”
