Gardner Company Looks to Develop the HOLE

The HOLE saga continues with the Gardner Company entering the fray. Like everyone else that has followed this story since January 24, 1987, I am cautiously optimistic. My own optimism is fueled by the fact that Gardner has the juice to get a project like this done AND has knowledge of the local market - which is probably the most important thing they bring to the table. I spoke about the announcement on FOX12 (see below). Keep your eyes and ears peeled for more. Good luck Gardner!

My Boise State Radio interview on “The Hole”

Got a call the other day from a new reporter over at Boise State Radio, Scott Ki. As a new Boise resident, he wondered why on Earth there is a large hole there at Eighth and Main. I told him the unvarnished truth: the site is cursed.

Hear the whole interview from Boise State Radio.

JUMPDATE 2010

Yep, you saw it in today’s Statesman. JUMP is back. Now, it’s not a $100 million deal, but a $70 million one. Instead of circling the grounds, it provides a Disneyesque flank on Myrtle, and a lot of open space. I still don’t get the concept, and I don’t think Simplot does either. A tractor museum, combined with two floors of event space, artists studios, a caterer and an ad-hoc cooking school? And foundation offices but no corporate headquarters?

I so, so, so, want to be wrong, but no one would seriously bring a proposal like this to market. How in the world do these people plan to activate this space?

Will Boise Lose Hawks Stadium?

There’s been a lot of hullabaloo surrounding Hawks stadium recently, mostly coming from Meridian. I have to hand it to Mayor DeWeerd and the Meridian Development Corporation: they have a vision, and a mission and they are going after it.

This morning the Boise Hawks unveiled a survey that showed a vast majority (75%+) of the 300 people surveyed, favored construction of a new multi-purpose sports facility somewhere in the Valley. It turns out that a plurality of people also identified MERIDIAN as the favored location for a new sports facility. I am guessing that this will have a few people at the City of Boise upset.

In January 2007, a design charrette for the 30th District Master Plan in Boise, revealed that the 200 people in attendance hoped that a new Hawks stadium would be built in downtown Boise. The photo below appears on page 185 of the 30th Street Master Plan, available on the City’s website.

Hawks Stadium envisioned as part of the 30th Street Neighborhood

So what say you, City of Boise officials? Are you working up a deal to make the stadium a centerpiece of a new 30th Street Neighborhood? The implementation plan for 30th Street says that within 1-3 years Boise City and CCDC will:

Identify where land assembly, land acquisition and/or development partnerships would help implement the development concept for each subdistrict. Initiate conversations with property owners to determine their level of interest in selling property, land assembly and/or development.

Where are we on this project? Granted the plan only went forward in June 2009, but with Meridian breathing down your necks, it might be time to kick this project into high gear - unless you really like the sound of “MERIDIAN HAWKS.”

The Mega Project as Economic Development

Economic developers and especially politicians love big signature economic development projects because they provide readily recognizable symbols of their supposed effectiveness. But sometimes those projects go awry. Like Olympic Village in Vancouver. Vancouver lost it’s AAA credit rating when it had to bail out the failed hedge fund that financed the Olympic Village project. Word to local governments everywhere . . .

Uninspired Architecture not just a Boise Plight

For years people have complained about all the “brown boxes” in Boise’s downtown, but no, we’re not the only one complaining about our drab architecture. A gleaming, 54 story glass box now graces the L.A. skyline, the first skyscraper completed in that city since 1992 - and the critics don’t like it. Says L.A. Times architectural critic Christopher Hawthorne:

As far as architectural ambition goes, though, the building makes a faint, even passive impression, despite the diverting patterns on its facade. It is more focused on operating as a glossy vertical marker for L.A. Live — and the tower is hard to miss from any of downtown’s freeways — than on exploring a fresh or idiosyncratic path for high-rise design in L.A.

Maybe the city of Los Angeles would like to trade L.A. Live for our Grove Hotel?

Read the whole story at the L.A. Times site.

City to JUMP: Take a Flying Leap

Well it comes as no surprise that the City of Boise has resoundingly panned the hastily thrown together JUMP project. As the Statesman reports today:

In August, city officials and urban design experts brought in by Boise Mayor Dave Bieter met with Simplot planners to review the project proposal. The gist of that meeting was that the project should change, said Councilman Alan Shealy.

And that . . .

Some of the biggest concerns: that the project didn’t connect well to BoDo or other Downtown developments, and that its design wouldn’t be open enough to pedestrians. “I heard the experts didn’t pull any punches,” (P&Z Member Doug) Cooper said. “It was a fascinating project, but where it could be better is how it sits in the city in an urban way … being active for people on the street, it just doesn’t do very well.”

And of course you might recall what I said way back in May when the project was first proposed:

It remains to be seen what the site planners are thinking. A ringed fortress in the city’s cultural district? There is zero visibility between the buildings in the complex, that is a negative. The one good thing about that could be sound mitigation from traffic. We’ll see though what design review and the Council have to say.

Good for the powers that be for saying NO to bad design. There’s been a lot of that in this city through the urban renewal years, some by the Simplots already (Grove Hotel). A $100 million project in the heart of the city is something that has to be done right.

A Lose-Lose for Two Historic Schools

Franklin School falls to the wrecking ball, September 17, 2009

Boise area residents have known for some time that they would lose two historic schools to the wrecking ball despite pleas from Preservation Idaho as late as this week. This morning, Franklin School began its slow move to the Ada County landfill, which illustrates and even sadder chapter in an already sad saga: everyone lost in this deal and it didn’t have to be that way.

Valley residents lose a huge part of their history, physical reminders of an education earned that can never be revisited. Preservation Idaho loses yet another battle to save important vessels of our built environment and Idahoans and the School District lose the opportunity to gain something from the loss of these important buildings.

For instance, what if the school district had let the demolition bid out to a green demolition company so that Idahoans could learn new demolition and recycling practices? What if the experience gained by recycling these buildings vaulted Idaho back into a national leadership position in the construction fields like it once was in the days of Harry Morrison?

And what if the school district was forward looking enough to do more than just clear these parcels and try to sell them, but instead actively led thoughtful and creative redevelopment projects? There is nothing that prohibits public agencies from being a lead developer on a project. Certainly the school district would say, “we’re not real estate developers.” In that they are correct. But the school district has also said that they feel an obligation to get the greatest return for tax payers. Letting these lots sit vacant while the private sector waits for market conditions to improve is no way to do that. It is time for all of our public agencies to reconceptualize their role in the community, and become leaders rather than ducking leadership opportunities.

RIP Franklin and Cole, and the memories and opportunities we lose with you.

Where in the Treasure Valley . . . are all the bike lanes?

I’ve been commuting via bicycle for the last year-and-a-half, and I have people say to me all the time something to the effect of, “I don’t know what the hell you cyclists are complaining about, there are bike lanes ALL OVER downtown and the rest of Boise.” As my recent twitpic tirade showed, however, that is not the case:

No bike lanes on Broadway

No bike lanes on Idaho Street in downtown Boise

No bike lanes on University Drive

So if there’s no bike lanes on the main east-west thoroughfare in downtown Boise, and none on the major streets near the University where HUNDREDS of students use bicycles to commute, just where the heck are they?

Well, they are currently few and far between, but ACHD is actually working to rectify that with a nearly 300 page plan to better prepare Ada County to truly be a safe and decent place to cycle (instead of just paying lip service to safe cycling as we have done in the past):

The new plan, if/when enacted, will finally resolve the issue of really having no bike lanes downtown. Below is the map showing current bike lanes in the downtown core:

Not a pretty picture. All we have now is bike lanes on portions of Main, and Ninth. The rest of downtown is a crap shoot. It doesn’t help also that 1) The city of Boise controls NONE of this; and, 2) that CCDC actually owns Eighth Street. Throw ACHD into the mix and you have a few too many cooks in the road building kitchen. The proposed bicycle lanes for downtown looks a little better:

The ACHD proposal adds lanes on Eighth and Tenth. This is a good start, but I still think we need to continue talking about our transportation system and what exactly we want it to accomplish.

For my part, I don’t want traffic moving quickly through downtown - that is only one vision of what our streets should do. My sympathies don’t lie with the guy who works downtown and lives in Meridian, who just wants to get his SUV out of here, up the Connector, and into his three car garage in a non-descript subdivision where he knows none of his neighbors.

Vision #2 is different: People staying downtown spending money, socializing, networking, and coming up with new ideas. A downtown that is cool, clean, diverse, and SAFE for people to wander, ride, sit, contemplate, enjoy.

These are our streets. The engineers we employ at ACHD build our transportation grid based upon what kind of downtown, city, and region we choose to live in. The new bicycle plan is a great start on implementing vision #2. Let’s keep it up.

David v. Goliath II: Blanchard v. Nelson on growth along the Snake River Plain

At the NewWest.net planning conference in June of this year, Professor Arthur (Chris) Nelson of the University of Utah raised some eyebrows when he outlined his predictions for the U.S. housing market over the coming decades, and his thoughts on what that meant for Idaho.

USC Professor Richard Green openly disagreed with Nelson’s projections as did BoDo developer Mark Rivers. The Calculated Risk blog also had some critiques, but nothing major.

Nelson’s analysis indicated that Idaho’s population would fill in along the Snake River Plain from it’s western edge in Ontario, OR, over to the eastern side of Idaho ending at Rexburg. For me it’s not how many people will move here, but where they will actually settle. Though Nelson believes growth will fill in along the I-84 corridor, evidence seems to contradict him indicating that growth will instead occur between the Wasatch Front, and move north to Rexburg - skipping the Boise Valley all together. There are good reasons for this.

Wealth is already leaving the Boise Valley for eastern Idaho and the Wasatch Front.

IRS data from 2006 and 2007 show positive migration to Ada County within Idaho. However, those migrating to Ada County from other parts of the state had average adjusted gross incomes of $33,337 annually, while those leaving Ada County for other parts of the state had annual incomes of $40,582. In total, residents worth $139 million moved to Ada County, and residents worth a total of $154 million moved out. That is a loss of $15 million in gross income for Ada County, to other parts of Idaho.

Additionally, in that same period, half of the top ten cities to which Boiseans moved were along the I-15 corridor with Provo, UT ranking first; Salt Lake City (2); Idaho Falls (5); Ogden, UT (7); and Pocatello (8). The more stable economic climate of eastern Idaho and Utah is but one reason why Boiseans are leaving.

There are strong sociocultural linkages between eastern Idaho and Utah.

It used to be said that Idaho had two capitals: Spokane, and Salt Lake City. Indeed, Coeur D’ Alene, ID is part of a two-state metropolitan statistical area (MSA) that includes Spokane and Coeur D’ Alene, and the Logan, UT MSA includes counties in southern Idaho. But physical proximity is not the only connection. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints exudes a strong cultural presence along the Wasatch Front and Eastern Idaho. With the presence of the new Temple in Rexburg and a growing BYU-Idaho campus there as well, the cultural linkages between eastern Idaho and Utah are only getting stronger.

Gaps in the transportation system separate the Boise Valley from eastern Idaho, and eastern Idaho from Utah. The gap between Utah and eastern Idaho, however, is shrinking more quickly.

Traffic patterns along Idaho’s highway system (seen below) show a consistent level of traffic between Ontario, OR and Heyburn, ID. Traffic drops off significantly, though, between Heyburn and American Falls. Traffic flows again pick up significantly between American Falls and Rexburg.

Lower traffic counts also show up on I-84 heading south out of Heyburn, and on I-15 heading south out of Pocatello, much like the reduced counts between Heyburn and American Falls. In this day and age of regional employment exchange will eastern Idaho ultimately align itself along I-84, or I-15?

If America’s foremost planners with the America2050 project have their way, the Pioneer rail line - which runs from Seattle to Chicago by way of Boise and Salt Lake City - will one day run again. But that line also contains another important spur: the link from Salt Lake City to Pocatello. As gas prices rise, airlines will offer fewer flights meaning Boise will inevitably end up with less air service in favor of airlines servicing larger airports such as Salt Lake and Denver. The rail link between Salt Lake and Pocatello, which also mirrors the west coast’s chief north-south land route between Mexico and Canada (CANAMEX) will exert strong pressure on the region to further develop in a north-south manner, and not throughout the Snake River Plain.

With white-collar job growth flat or shrinking in the Boise Valley and the economy in eastern Idaho more stable, strong sociocultural linkages between eastern Idaho and Utah, and a developing transportation network between eastern Idaho and Utah, evidence seems to suggest that the north-south corridor along I-15, rather than the east-west corridor along I-84 seems better poised for long-term economic and population growth. Alas, only time will tell.