On this busy street, downtown Boise is changing before commuters’ eyes. Here’s how
Cars spread across five lanes whiz by pedestrians on adjoining sidewalks. Homes more than a century old stand next to brand-new apartment buildings. Restaurants and breweries attract customers adjacent to parking lots.
On one street — Myrtle Street — Boise’s change is in front of everyone’s eyes as construction workers build new parts of the skyline.
Since 2018, four apartment buildings, each seven or eight stories tall, have opened or started to go up on the north side of Myrtle, across from Julia Davis Park. Gone are most of the parking lots and gravel that filled much of the area until a few years ago.
For much of the city’s history, people lived in the neighborhood north of Myrtle Street. A turning point came in the 1980s, when the street was expanded to handle more traffic.
The new apartment buildings are in part a result of Boise City Hall’s efforts to rejuvenate Myrtle and nearby streets. To some historic preservationists, though, the process to get to this point has been messy. To the leaders who orchestrated the redevelopment, Myrtle Street is an overwhelming success.
“It’s just really interesting that (one of) the first neighborhoods in downtown Boise has now become a totally reinvented neighborhood in 2022,” said Casey Lynch, CEO of Roundhouse, the development company that owns The Fowler and Hearth on Broad buildings, by phone.
Myrtle runs from South 13th Street in the west to Broadway Avenue in the east. Cars can only drive east on Myrtle. Front Street runs parallel, a couple of blocks north, as a one-way street for drivers heading west. The two streets together create access to and from the I-184 Connector. They’re two wide roads designed to handle heavy traffic while slicing through downtown. Their design has had significant ramifications for how Boise has grown.
The Fowler, built in 2018, has 159 units and seven stories. It’s wedged between West Broad Street to the north, South 5th Street to the east and Myrtle to the south.
Jules on 3rd opened last summer with 173 units and eight stories. It sits between South 3rd and South 2nd streets.
Hearth on Broad, in between The Fowler and Jules on 3rd, is scheduled to open next month between West Broad Street, South 4th Street and West Myrtle Street. It has 161 units and eight stories.
On the east side of the WinCo grocery store, another apartment building called Local Boise is being built at 250 E. Myrtle St. It’s planned to have 252 units and seven stories.
In total, that makes 745 new residential units in the Central Addition — the neighborhood between Myrtle and Front streets from Capitol Boulevard east to Broadway Avenue.
“The new residential buildings and businesses are breathing new life into this area,” Jennifer Mauk, Downtown Boise Neighborhood Association president, wrote in an email.
Central Addition neighborhood’s deep roots
The new buildings sprung up from mostly unused space that belied the neighborhood’s history.
The Central Addition, between Front and Myrtle, was aptly named when it was added to the city in 1890, the same year Idaho earned statehood. Originally, it was a place where the city’s upper class and elites lived alongside working-class people.
That changed when a railroad was built along Front Street in 1894 to connect with the lumber mill at Barber, a former company town in what is now Southeast Boise’s Barber Valley. Warehouses popped up nearby to support the railroad. Working-class people remained, but wealthier families moved out, seeking more desirable places to live, said Dan Everhart, outreach historian at the Idaho State Historic Preservation Office.
The lumber mill closed in the 1930s, and the railroad was eventually removed, Everhart said. The neighborhood remained intact throughout the 1900s. Then in the late 1980s, the Idaho Transportation Department widened Front and Myrtle streets. “It irreversibly changed the neighborhood,” Everhart said by phone.
Part of the expansion was to redirect traffic that had been using Idaho and Main streets to get through downtown and create a new access route to the Connector. While Front and Myrtle already existed, they provided direct access to the interstate after the Connector was built. Eastbound traffic flows straight from the Connector onto Myrtle Street and westbound traffic flows straight from Front Street onto the Connector. The expansion helped them carry more cars, making it easier to drive in and out of downtown.
“It also created a concern about how adjacent properties would be developed,” according to the 2004 River Street-Myrtle Street Master Plan prepared by the Capital City Development Corp., Boise’s urban-renewal agency. “The Connector bordered the area where the rail yards had been abandoned, leaving large blocks of undeveloped land. The Connector gave these properties increased visibility to automobile traffic.”
The 2004 plan expressed concern about the prospect of suburban-style strip commercial uses along the wider roads. The urban renewal district could guide development toward more urban construction. But the redevelopment of the area was still years away.
Once the two one-way roads were widened, the blocks in between, from 4th to 6th streets, became less desirable to live in, Everhart said. That kick-started an overall decline as homeowners moved out. Their houses turned into rentals.
Over time, many of these old homes were demolished. Some were preserved and moved elsewhere. Five, built in the early 1900s, still remain, in between The Fowler and Hearth on Broad. Some still have people living in them.
Mauk hopes developers recognize the history in the area and work to preserve what’s there.
The Fowler apartment building is named after the historic Fowler House, which was built in 1895. It was preserved and moved to the North End in 2015. Part of the $3.24 million that Roundhouse (previously named Local Construct) received from Capital City Development Corp. included $82,000 to preserve historic structures.
But since the city didn’t implement stricter policies to preserve homes 50-plus years old, many were demolished.
“None of this has been an accident,” Everhart said.
As friendly vibes in the Central Addition neighborhood dwindled, so did potential opposition to the redevelopment projects.
“One of biggest barriers to development is people,” Lynch said, “and there weren’t that many people there.”
Capital City Development Corp. board Chair Dana Zuckerman referred to the land between Front and Myrtle streets as “the wild west.” With land available, Zuckerman said by phone, “it just made sense to build vertically there.”
Downtown Boise redevelopment takes hold
A decade ago, Whole Foods opened in between the eastern edge of Front and Myrtle streets. Two years later, Trader Joe’s opened a few blocks west, near South Capitol Boulevard. Though WinCo was built east of 2nd Street in 1998, the two newer, nationally known grocery stores nearby sparked developers to think differently, Zuckerman said.
While coming up with ideas for the area, the Capital City Development Corp. asked people who used the area what they thought of Front and Myrtle streets.
“The word barrier came up over and over and over,” Zuckerman said. With two roads acting as highways surrounded by underused land, Front and Myrtle bisected the city.
Lynch had a hypothesis. When he started working on The Fowler project in 2015, he thought there might be demand for downtown apartments, given the urban environment, proximity to Julia Davis Park and the city’s overall housing shortage.
To drum up a more lively neighborhood, Capital City Development Corp. a few years ago invested in improvements on Broad Street to make it more pedestrian-friendly east of Capitol Boulevard. Broad Street is in between Front and Myrtle, running parallel to those two streets from 2nd Street to 9th Street. Its sidewalks are now made of pavers, and bicycle parking is ample. The city wants Broad Street to be a “festival street.”
The redevelopment agency also agreed to spend money to assist The Fowler in redeveloping the area.
Lynch said that money helped play a big role. At the time, he considered The Fowler a one-off project. Once his hypothesis was proven true, and land was available nearby, the transformation took off.
“I never would have anticipated how quickly it would change,” Lynch said.
Life in the new downtown apartments doesn’t come cheap. Monthly rent at The Fowler ranges from $1,270 to $1,920 for studio, one- and two-bedroom apartments. Rent at Hearth on Broad ranges from $1,400 to $2,700 for the same options.
Not only are there new buildings, there are places to eat and drink, too.
The Wylder restaurant is on the ground floor of The Fowler. Next door is Boise Brewing. A couple of blocks down, Mother Earth Brew Co. recently opened next to Jules on 3rd. Hearth on Broad has space for a future restaurant on the ground floor.
“If anyone told you (they saw this coming), they’re lying,” said Collin Rudeen, president of Boise Brewing, by phone.
In 2014, the brewery opened on Broad Street. At the time, Rudeen would never see people strolling along the street. He credits the streetscape improvements and new apartments for helping bring life to the neighborhood. New nearby residents, many of whom work within walking distance, have become regulars.
“Living close to where you work cuts down on the amount of cars on the road and gives people a sense of pride in their neighborhood,” Mauk wrote. “Downtown Boise has tons to do, amenities, and access to outdoor recreation right outside your door. This part of town will bring needed housing and new destinations to discover.”
Front and Myrtle streets don’t have many crosswalks and remain challenging for pedestrians, but Zuckerman believes they no longer feel like two highways cutting through the city. She said having taller buildings closer to the street tends to lead to drivers slowing down. The speed limit is 35 miles per hour. In the future, the development agency has plans to improve the pedestrian experience on Myrtle with a new traffic signal at 5th Street.
“When we first started investing in Boise, it was what we call a 12-hour city,” Lynch said. “People would drive into downtown to go to work, and then they would leave and go home to where they lived. But Boise’s changing to become more of an 18-hour city. You’ve got people living in downtown.”
Zuckerman has never seen anywhere grow this quickly.
“It is unbelievable. You don’t have to live here very long to witness the changes,” Zuckerman said.
The future of Myrtle Street
Nowadays, Zuckerman loves seeing the progress of the construction on Myrtle Street. She enjoys seeing people walking around on Broad Street. She believes the new developments have helped create a better downtown.
More new projects are coming. Lynch owns more land between 4th and 5th streets and is beginning to plan another building that features residential and hospitality uses. City leaders are discussing a location across the street, adjoining Julia Davis Park, as a site for affordable housing.
Zuckerman wants to continue coming up with ways to connect the city so there’s less of a divide between downtown and Boise State University, which is just across the Boise River from Julia Davis Park.
Mauk wrote that some residents have had concerns about density, parking and the heights of buildings. She said it’s a “need” to protect the area’s quality of life, while highlighting walkability, green space and the variety of businesses.
“Next in my mind would be more place-making, more art or identifying features,” Rudeen said. New neighbors might still be moving in as that happens.
Everhart, though disappointed in the lack of protection for historic homes, believes some of the changes have been positive. He said he’s enjoyed eating at The Wylder and might be interested in living in one of the new buildings if he didn’t already live elsewhere.
“It’s a different Boise,” Zuckerman said. “Whether you like it or not, that’s what the city is right now. People need a place to live.”
This story was originally published February 24, 2022 at 4:00 AM.
