Boise sends Hill Road assisted living project back to P&Z

Boise City Council members weren’t opposed to developer Doug Jayo’s proposal for the northwest corner of Hill Road and 15th Street.

In fact, council members praised Jayo’s project, a 157,000-square-foot, 3.5-acre assisted living facility. A range of living options for seniors will be important as Boise’s and the rest of the nation’s population ages, they said.

The problem is that Jayo’s project is just too big and doesn’t transition well into the surrounding neighborhood, council members said, agreeing with several people who live in the area and testified Tuesday before the council.

With his project, Jayo hopes to tap into what’s known as the “silver tsunami” — a meteoric increase in the number of Baby Boomers and other non-working seniors.

Councilman Scot Ludwig, the only council member to vote in favor of approving Jayo’s project, said he wasn’t as worried about its design or size as his fellow council members were.

“There’s no doubt, five to 10 years from now, we’re going to hope and wish that we had a project like this in the location it’s at with the massing or density that we have,” Ludwig said. “In fact, I’m assuming then we’ll be wishing we had more units.”

The council sent the project back to the Planning and Zoning Commission, which denied the project in September, encouraging Jayo re-design the assisted living facility and bring it back to the city for approval.

This story was originally published March 16, 2016 at 6:34 AM with the headline "Boise sends Hill Road assisted living project back to P&Z."