Expo Idaho could get a 2nd new stadium, for baseball, as an old development idea revives
It’s not just grandstanding: Ada County leaders have shown in recent weeks they’re serious about bringing new sports stadiums online.
In an Oct. 30 auction, Ada County commissioners awarded a 30-year lease to a company with connections to professional soccer to transform the former Les Bois horse-racing track at Expo Idaho into a soccer-focused, mixed-use stadium.
Later that day, commissioners met separately with Atlanta developer Chris Schoen, representatives from the Boise Hawks minor-league baseball team, and a Garden City official to discuss the possibility of developing a new stadium for the Hawks to replace Memorial Stadium.
Progress on baseball stadium after years of striking out
Schoen and Jeff Eiseman, a partner of Schoen’s in the Hawks’ company, Agon Sports and Entertainment, bought the team in 2015 and have worked for years to move it to a new stadium accompanied by new multifamily housing and businesses. Schoen’s Greenstone Properties has built such developments in Fort Wayne, Indiana and North Augusta, South Carolina.
But Schoen and Eiseman have run into repeated hurdles in Boise. Their first proposed site, for a joint soccer and baseball stadium at Americana Boulevard and Shoreline Drive, drew vocal opposition from neighbors and fell through in 2018, the Statesman previously reported.
In 2019, Boise voters quashed a second proposal for a downtown stadium — bordered by Main Street, Fairview Avenue, Whitewater Park Boulevard and 27th Street — by enacting an ordinance requiring a citywide election on any stadium that would cost more than $5 million in public and/or private funds.
In 2020, Schoen, Eiseman and Meridian developer Ball Ventures Ahlquist floated an idea for a $400 million development at Expo Idaho with a stadium as its centerpiece. They approached the Greater Boise Auditorium District seeking money, but the district said no. A citizens’ committee considering options for Expo Idaho’s future said it wasn’t ready to commit, and the proposal quietly faded away.
Expo Idaho not subject to Boise stadium ordinance
Perhaps to avoid this kind of derailment, Ryan Armbruster, a lawyer for Garden City’s urban renewal agency, emphasized the importance of conducting public outreach on the current proposal as it progresses.
“We need to make sure we do this right and we don’t have our foot on the gas so fast that we create issues,” he told commissioners.
Because the Expo Idaho site is on unincorporated Ada County land, it is not subject to the Boise ordinance.
Attendees at the Oct. 30 meeting discussed a plan to create an urban renewal district on part of the Expo Idaho site and adjacent Garden City property to help pay for the project.
Many of the specifics of how the financing would work remain open questions, Armbruster told commissioners. Setting up an urban renewal district requires a feasibility study, extensive negotiations and an intergovernmental agreement involving Ada County, Garden City and the city’s urban renewal agency, he said.
Relationships among the parties involved remain “to be defined,” Commissioner Tom Dayley said at the meeting. Garden City’s City Council and urban renewal agency have expressed support for the project, and the City Council has provided funding for the agency to explore possible approaches.
Determining the boundaries of the proposed urban renewal district could take over 90 days, Armbruster estimated.
“I would say we are at the very first step,” he said.
Schoen and Eiseman did not respond to requests for more details about their current proposal.
