Remnants of the past remain in the flooded ITD Boise headquarters. See the damage
If you’ve driven down State Street over the last 63 years heading to downtown Boise, you likely know the three-story Idaho Transportation Department headquarters.
From the outside, the Philip E. Batt building’s turquoise facade stands as a quietly imposing figure surrounded by 44 acres of mostly grass and parking lots on the corner of State and Whitewater Park Boulevard. Several smaller buildings dot the campus to the building’s south and east.
But the interior has become an eerie vestige of the past after frozen pipes in a penthouse mechanical room started a cataclysmic flood on Jan. 2, 2022, that forced the Idaho Transportation Department to vacate it. The building has sat empty for nearly three years.
Now, state leaders are faced with a difficult choice with what to do with the building after new estimates released Thursday showed the cost to repair the campus is nearly double what lawmakers cited.
The Department of Administration initially told lawmakers that repairing the building could cost anywhere from $32.5 million to $63 million based on a rough estimation. That estimate did not take into account the scope of the flood damage and was based on general reconstruction costs. The new, more in-depth estimates showed it would cost at least $64 million.
Lawmakers used the Department of Administration’s lower estimate to scrap the sale of the campus to three developers, which spawned fights in the Legislature and an Idaho Supreme Court lawsuit.
Lawmakers said they believed, based on faulty calculations, that selling the campus would cost taxpayers more than to keep the building and repair it. The true cost now appears much higher, with renovations now estimated to cost nearly $59 million more than if they’d sold the property.
But as officials debated what to do with the campus, the building continued to steadily decay with deferred maintenance. Staying without repairs was never a choice, according to officials. The flood caused widespread damage and would have exposed employees to hazardous materials like asbestos and lead.
“We had to get out,” ITD spokesperson John Tomlinson told the Idaho Statesman.
When the pipes froze, water flooded all three floors of the building and poured down the walls, stairs and elevator shafts “like a bathtub overflowing,” said Todd Sorensen, ITD’s facilities manager.
Abandoned quickly, much of the interior seems stuck in time with the phantom imprints of people who packed up and left in a rush.
Notes and thoughts are scribbled in red and blue marker on whiteboards on the second and third floors. A deodorant stick lies in a cubicle next to a forgotten necklace. Above, ceiling tiles are ripped away, exposing wrapped wiring and vents covered in yellow insulation. The hallways are pockmarked with circular punctures — efforts to drain water from inside the walls. The paint sags in some spots, looking like a wave stuck in motion.
The bare ceilings are covered in spray-on asbestos fireproofing that looks like curdled milk or gray cottage cheese. If you disturb the asbestos, the microscopic crystalline fibers can scar your lungs and lead to fatal cancers. Peel back the cream-colored wallpaper and there’s mold on the walls, too.
Spending even 30 minutes inside can prompt a headache, tightness behind red-rimmed eyes, and shortness of breath coming on from the mold and dust.
The hallways are lined with mercury-containing fluorescent lights, most broken and hanging from the ceiling on metal fixtures. It smells like dust and the musk of an old building. Ventilation pulls air inside to combat the mold, spinning distant fans embedded deep in the building’s guts.
Wooden furniture is stacked and organized in former meeting rooms and offices. In the main lobby, stacked chairs stand over a large outline of Idaho. The 1960s-era elevators don’t work anymore. But the glass front doors still slide open when you walk under the sensors — possibly one of the few times they’ve slid along the floors since men and women hurried in and out around New Year’s three years ago.
But the building still stands. In the coming months, state leaders will have a few choices for what to do with it. They could move forward with repairs that cost, at a minimum, $99 million. Or they could demolish it and rebuild. Or they could walk back the costly battle that played out in the Legislature and Idaho Supreme Court.
The new estimates are set to be presented to the Idaho Transportation Department board in January, according to a sheet provided by the department. A potential timeline for the repairs showed it could take until 2028 before relocating ITD workers from the state’s Chinden Boulevard campus.
