This Boise park was approved two decades ago. Can a family’s donation get it finished?

The family behind Harris Ranch has donated $1.5 million to advance the construction of the long-promised — and perennially delayed — Alta Harris Park in the Barber Valley neighborhood of East Boise.

The gift to the city from the Harris family aims to spur development of the 20-acre triangle of land between South Eckert Road and the Boise River scheduled for later this summer and into 2027, almost 20 years after the park was originally approved by Boise officials.

Named for Harris family matriarch Alta Harris, the park would become the seventh in Boise’s riverside “Ribbon of Jewels,” a series of community parks named for prominent local women.

The full build-out of Alta Harris Park is estimated to cost more than $11 million, Boise city spokesperson Maria Ortega told the Idaho Statesman in an email.

Boise earmarked $3 million in its fiscal 2026 budget for the “initial development phase” of the park, covering some “core amenities” — parking, paths, restrooms and landscaping — as well as a “green up” of the existing weedy field. That money will come from impact fees assessed in the Southeast Boise-Barber Valley park planning area, according to city budget documents. All in, the city expects to put $4.75 million in impact fees toward the project, Ortega said.

The Harris family’s donation “will allow for further development in alignment with the master plan,” Ortega said, adding that the city is still designing the final park with an eye toward a bidding process this summer.

“Our team will have a better idea of what can be accomplished at that time,” she said.

About 2,200 people live within a 10-minute walk of the park site, according to city data.

“For the Harris family, this park has been a long time coming,” Harris family spokesperson Doug Self wrote in a press release. ”Alta was alive when the City of Boise dedicated the park in her name and seeing that recognition take shape meant a great deal to her and to the family. Alta is now passed, but her children are stepping forward to ensure a thriving, active space is brought to fruition for the community in Harris Ranch.”

Preliminary site plans call for soccer fields, a “natural” playground, a restroom, a sport court and paths connecting to the broader Boise River Greenbelt, Self said. The city plans to start work on the next phases of construction this summer, eyeing parking lot and path construction, as well as site grading.

Boise Mayor Lauren McLean lauded the donation during her State of the City address on May 6.

“I am grateful to the Harris family for their continued partnership with the city, and this gift to our community in honor of Alta Harris,” McLean said. “Residents have been asking us for years to green up this park and this donation provides us with the resources to deliver for East Boiseans.

“I look forward to families biking in along the Greenbelt and neighbors enjoying the park for generations to come.”

Park delays a sore subject in Barber Valley

The park has a tangled history extending back some two decades, with delays in funding and construction frustrating residents in the burgeoning planned community.

Though donated alongside the agreement to create Harris Ranch in 2007, crews with the Boise Parks and Recreation Department only recently finished the park’s first phase, according to the city.

The land was dedicated as a park in 2008, but the Great Recession halted city spending on the project. The sides then agreed to amend the deal, and the city reimbursed the Harris family for the land using roughly $1.6 million in money collected from a special tax assessed on Harris Ranch homeowners to fund infrastructure, Self told the Idaho Statesman in an email. The tax mechanism, called a Community Infrastructure District, wound up at the center of a court battle that took years to adjudicate. The Idaho Supreme Court in March resolved the case in favor of the developers, finding that the millions collected — including the money that paid for the park land — were legal under state law.

Now, “with park funding right,” the Harris family is putting $1.5 million back into the project, “as a meaningful gesture aimed at completing Alta Harris Park,” Self said.

The money is the third significant donation from the Harris family to public entities in the past five years. In 2022, they gifted three acres of land valued at around $2 million to the Boise School District for what is now Dallas Harris Elementary School. And, in 2025, the family handed over its geothermal water rights to Boise — a donation that the city said quadrupled its geothermal capacity.

“Honoring our mother with a gift to the community she loved is a tribute we are proud to offer,” Alta Harris’ children, Felicia Burkhalter, Millie Davis and Randy Harris, said in a press release. “We are pleased to partner with the city of Boise to help bring this park to life and provide a place where the residents and families of Harris Ranch can recreate, relax, and make memories on the land that has meant so much to our family. It is our hope that generations to come will do the same.”