Eagle rushes to change the fate of its Foothills before Avimor-backed mayor steps in
A crowd of more than 100 stretched past the door of the Eagle City Council chambers and into the lobby of City Hall as the city debated the future of its Foothills.
At the heart of the debate is whether to allow the planned community Avimor to develop 23,000 acres it owns in the Eagle Foothills.
The 800 acres Avimor has already developed were permitted in 2006 by Ada County under its planned community ordinance, which at the time allowed for urban-style development outside city limits.
A decade later, Ada County shifted course on its planned community ordinance. In 2016, the county tightened restrictions so that urban-style growth would be allowed only within a city’s limits.
That meant Avimor’s only path forward for developing the thousands of additional homes and miles of trails it planned was annexation by Eagle.
Cities can annex land only if it is part of their comprehensive plans. So in 2006 and 2007, Avimor worked closely with Eagle to expand its planning area into the Foothills so that the city might one day annex Avimor.
But earlier this year, Eagle’s leaders began to rethink development of the Foothills, which could welcome more than 20,000 new houses under current plans. Their chief concern was the cost to provide services such as police and fire protection far beyond the city center.
This summer, the City Council directed Eagle’s planners to remove the Foothills area from the comprehensive plan, thus limiting Avimor’s ability to develop there. If the Foothills area is removed, those thousands of acres would revert back to county control, where it would remain zoned as rural, with a minimum lot size of 10 acres. The 30,000 acres of Foothills would allow for about 800 homes in all under rural zoning.
On Monday night, the Planning and Zoning Commission weighed comments from Eagle and Avimor residents about the potential change.
“Of all the projects I have considered, this has to be the most difficult,” said commission member Derek Smith.
Dan Richter, managing partner of Avimor, argued that the city was moving too quickly to throw off a plan worked out between the city and developers that had been over a decade in the making.
The current City Council knows it will need to move fast to adopt the amendment removing Avimor from the plan, or it may fail. That’s because Mayor-elect Jason Pierce has signaled that he prefers to keep the comprehensive plan as is. He was backed, in part, by Avimor’s partners, including Richter, who in September told the Statesman it was “basically just an election cycle” until the city turned in favor of his development.
Charlie Baun, a former consultant to Avimor who will join the council in January, also received thousands of dollars in donations from his former employer.
“This is a hurried process,” Baun told the commission. “We have to get public input. We have to go through the experts.”
Several other people also urged the commission to wait and give the public more time to comment. Some argued that previous amendments to the comprehensive plan had undergone months-long processes of public input.
Commission members raised questions over whether the future City Council would flip any decision made by current leaders.
“Do they turn right around and re-amend the comprehensive plan and align it with their own philosophies?” asked Steve Guerber.
Yes, said City Planner Nichoel Baird Spencer, they could.
So, asked Commissioner Diane McLaughlin: Why would the city not just retain the Foothills within its comprehensive plan, and change the zoning allowed there to only allow rural, larger lots?
Baird Spencer replied that state land use code directs cities to plan for “urban-style development.”
“Ten- to 40-acre lots — at that point — are not urban,” she said. “And the city cannot provide an Eagle level of service to that area.”
Richter disputed that his development would strain Eagle’s finances and impact its level of services.
Baird Spencer, though, said that today, the city’s taxes cover 65% of the cost of its police and fire services. If the city does grow into the Foothills, city taxes would cover just 50% of its services.
Roads — constantly a factor in Eagle politics — were also a subject of concern.
Many of the road improvements the state has planned for have yet to be funded, which some worried would cause problems in the future if the Foothills develops in an urban way. The Idaho Transportation Department, for example, has a goal to widen Idaho 55 to four lanes from Beacon Light Road to the Boise County line before 2040, but the project remains unfunded.
Jim Fehrens, a retired civil engineer who worked for ITD and as an engineer for Ada County, worries that Avimor would burden the roads.
“If money were available tomorrow, it would take 20 years to get it designed and built,” he said. “Since this is unfunded, the level of service will be unacceptable.”
But Richter argued that the clustered development would create nodes for cars and transportation, rather than spreading traffic out throughout the Foothills.
Brad Pfannmuller, an Avimor project manager, said the development would help fund these improvements. “Permanent development would bring money from the development community to fund these improvements that are already needed,” he added.
Avimor’s supporters also said their community would help to preserve trails for hikers and mountain bikers that would be endangered if the land were broken into 10- to 40-acre lots.
“With fences, that changes everything,” said Chad McCloud, who owns a real estate brokerage service and has worked with Avimor’s sales office.
Richter pointed out that many people don’t realize the trails they frequent, or parking spots they use at the trailheads, are privately owned by Avimor.
“We can’t afford to keep those open (to the public) if we’re not welcome in the city anymore,” he said.
David Eberle, a former Boise City councilman and economic consultant to Avimor, fought back against those who said the plan would help keep the Foothills rural by retaining lots between 10 and 40 acres. He argued that the city has an opportunity to keep growth in its control rather than reverting to the county’s rural zoning designation.
“Wishing for a past that never existed is naive at best,” Eberle said.
In the end, despite urging from the city’s attorney to make a recommendation to the council on Monday night, the commission unanimously opted to continue the public hearing to 6 p.m. on Monday, Dec. 16, just two weeks before Eagle’s city government will change hands.
“I’m trying to drag our feet, which people indicated would be the right way forward,” Guerber said.
Correction: A previous version of this article misspelled Chad McCloud’s name and misidentified him a a member of the McLeod family. In fact, McCloud owns Epic Realty and works with Avimor’s sales team.
This story was originally published November 18, 2019 at 9:24 PM.
