New Eagle mayor undoes his predecessor’s legacy, one project at a time.
In the five weeks since he became Eagle’s mayor, Jason Pierce has reversed many projects that his predecessor, Stan Ridgeway, set into motion. His latest move is to sell a community center that Ridgeway opened in December.
Pierce and the two newly elected city councilmen who support him, Charlie Baun and Brad Pike, have scrutinized the previous administration’s decision to buy a property with three buildings known as The Landing at 175 E. Mission Drive. The purchase has also come under investigation from the FBI and the Idaho Attorney General’s Office, though neither will say why.
Pierce has opposed many of his predecessor’s policies and has used an election which he handily defeated Ridgeway as a mandate to reverse many of Ridgeway’s policies.
Where Ridgeway pushed to limit development in the Eagle Foothills, Pierce has said he is for it. Where Ridgeway wanted to build denser infill housing downtown to help support businesses there, Pierce and the council want to preserve Eagle’s large-lot character and grow outward instead. Where Ridgeway advocated spending taxpayer dollars to build a downtown street extension before 2021, Pierce’s administration has pulled back.
Eagle Landing opening scrutinized
Since he became mayor Jan. 14, Pierce has called several City Council meetings that have cast uncertainty over the future of The Landing, which the city has renamed Eagle Landing.
Eagle bought the 1.5-acre property last summer after the city was approached by the property’s owners. Ridgeway and the council wanted the site for three reasons. They wanted a space to host workshops for adults and summer camps for children. They needed a new space for the city Parks and Recreation Department, which had been using City Hall closets as office space. And they wanted a new space for the city’s history museum, which had outgrown its old home in Eagle’s first city hall, a 1947 building on State Street.
Eagle Landing included three buildings that would meet all three needs: two one-story buildings and a former church built in the 1930s. And it sits just across from Eagle Elementary School, an easy walk for schoolchildren going to after-school programs.
After the city purchased the property, it renovated the first two buildings to house the community center and the parks office. They opened in December. Work is underway to transform the church into the museum.
Pierce acknowledged that selling Eagle Landing would reverse several months of work. The property cost the city $1.6 million to buy and renovate, plus nearly 1,400 hours of staff time, he said.
But the way Ridgeway’s administration bought the property justifies moving the center elsewhere, Pierce said.
Purchase of the property linked to Pierce campaign donors
Pierce said the previous administration unfairly put the city in competition with a private business that sought to buy Eagle Landing.
Last year, Ridgeway was approached by Ed and Mark Priddy, the owners of the Eagle Landing. The Priddys told Ridgeway they had an offer on the property from Innovate Academy and Preparatory School, a private school based in Eagle. They asked Ridgeway if the city would want to make a better offer. Ridgeway did, and the city bought the property.
Pierce said Ridgeway’s decision to put in a bid for a property that he knew an Eagle business wanted sets “a bad precedent.”
“You set the tone that if you come talk to the city about a project, and if the city feels they can get something better with it, then they’ll go and get it from underneath you,” Pierce said. “Why would you ever want to do business in the city of Eagle?”
Innovate Academy is managed by Megan Stephens, Gloria Nagel, Tessa Osborne and April Dillon. Dillon is the daughter-in-law of Dennis Dillon, owner of several new and used car dealerships throughout the Treasure Valley.
The Dillon family, including April and her husband, Brad, gave $4,000 to Pierce’s campaign.
Asked by a Statesman reporter in a phone interview Feb. 11 whether he knew of April Dillon’s interest in the Eagle Landing property, Pierce said, “I had no idea that they were connected to the project at all.”
A week later, at a meeting on Feb. 18, Eagle resident Shelley Brock asked Pierce to respond to the fact that the daughter-in-law of one of Pierce’s campaign donors was connected to the Landing.
“Do you know who it is?” Pierce asked. “Because I know nobody that donated any money to my campaign.”
When Brock specified April Dillon, Pierce responded, “I had no idea they had anything to do with the Landing property. I had no idea she was a part of this school at all.”
In a phone interview on Feb. 24, Pierce said that he meant he “had no idea the Dillons were involved when they donated,” and that he had learned of April Dillon’s involvement only from his earlier interview with a Statesman reporter.
Dillon, asked in a phone interview about her donations to Pierce’s campaign, said she had no comment. When a reporter asked a follow-up question, Dillon hung up. She did not respond to an email asking whether she had discussed The Landing with Pierce.
(Dennis Dillon is also a neighbor of Kevin Zasio in the Two Rivers subdivision. Before the November election, Zasio gave information to media outlets alleging that the purchase of Eagle Landing was illegal, because the city took on debt without voter approval. In 2017, the city of Eagle also sued Two Rivers for blocking public access to a parking lot that leads to the Greenbelt. That became a focus during the election.)
In an email to the Statesman, Innovate Academy director Tessa Osborne wrote, “Innovate Academy considered Eagle Landing as a potential site but ultimately secured property in Eagle that is a great fit for its program.”
Pierce said three parties have expressed interest in the Eagle Landing property since he took office. He said he did not know who they are, because he was approached by “middlemen.”
Pike, one of the newly elected councilmen, said that the way the city bought the property left a “bad taste” in his mouth that made him hesitant to approve “any future funding for this thing.”
Property lacked proper zoning, certificate of occupancy
The way the city bought Eagle Landing isn’t the only problem Pierce and his council allies see with the redevelopment project.
When Ridgeway and his former City Council opened the community center and new parks and recreation office in December, they left parts of the project unfinished: They had failed to acquire a certificate of occupancy and to rezone the parcel for government use. A fire department inspection of the building found it was missing a few exit signs and crash bars on the doors in case of an emergency.
Pierce closed the community center during his first week in office until it could be brought into compliance with city code. The new council met that week to talk about other things the city still needed to do to bring the project into compliance: making some renovations to the parking lot drainage, and installing key-card readers and security cameras. The work would cost about $165,000, Pierce said.
Rather than authorizing the money to finish the previous administration’s project, Pierce instead suggested closing Eagle Landing, moving some of the programmed events at the community center to City Hall, and building two additions to City Hall for the community center space and the parks offices. City Hall, 660 E. Civic Lane, is half a mile from Eagle Landing.
He proposed moving the church that will house the museum to a parcel west of the library, on the same block as City Hall, creating a centralized civic center for Eagle.
Pierce estimates that the cost of a new community center would be about $1.9 million, not including the cost to move the museum building. He said building additions to City Hall, rather than maintaining a satellite campus, would reduce maintenance, operation and other costs.
His proposal has created a conflict on the council between the new members, who have fallen in line behind Pierce, and the older members — Kenny Pittman and Miranda Gold — who were part of purchasing The Landing.
“We did it hastily, we didn’t do it methodically, we didn’t follow proper procedure,” said Pike at a meeting Feb. 6. “We need to do things setting a good example as the city for the rest of the public to follow suit.”
Pittman, who was elected in 2017, pushed back.
“If it wasn’t done correctly, we’re rectifying it now,” Pittman said. “There’s no way to go back. What it sounds like to me is you just want to get rid of the property and start over somewhere else.”
“If that’s in the best interest of the public, I’m all for it,” Pike said.
“It’s not,” Pittman said. He argued that Eagle needed a community center today, and that building a community center anew would displace activities planned at the community center.
What the council decided
Discussion over the community center has largely focused on providing a space safe for children — but the Eagle City Council meeting on Feb. 18 was not one you might have wanted children to see.
Residents both supporting and opposing Eagle Landing filled the council chambers, accusing both Mayor Pierce’s and Mayor Ridgeway’s campaigns of corruption and conspiracy. Testimonies were met with booing and hissing.
Many residents urged the city not to rush to sell Eagle Landing. After nearly two hours of back-and-forth, the council compromised, voting unanimously to create a committee that will study alternative locations and compare them with the cost of keeping Eagle Landing.
Pierce argued against the council’s decision. “Sometimes we committee things to death,” he said.
He also worried that Eagle residents might come to rely on the community center.
“The longer we drag this out, the more it’s going to hurt to rip the Band Aid off,” he added.
Baun said a cost analysis would make the council’s decision “as objective as possible.”
“If it comes back, and City Hall is at or equivalent to (keeping Eagle Landing), and if we can auction it off and make that back and then put it on the tax roll, I’m going to go that way,” he said.
Pierce would choose the committee’s members and the City Council would approve them. The council set a June 1 deadline for its report.
The parks department and community center at the Eagle Landing would remain open for summer camps that have already been scheduled through the end of August. The city would not make any further upgrades, such as the security system or parking-lot drainage. The history museum would receive money to finish its renovations.
As they have before, Pittman and Gold defended the city’s purchase of The Landing, arguing it provided a much-needed community center.
“We need to find a solution to our problem,” Pittman said. “Right now, that solution is The Landing.”
After the Feb. 18 meeting, Pike asked for reconsideration of the decision to form the committee and keep the community center open. The City Council is set to reconsider its decision at its meeting on Tuesday, Feb. 25.
This story was originally published February 24, 2020 at 1:27 PM.
