JUMPDATE! Now Hiring: “Board of Dreamers”

My good friends over at Rizen Creative have the whole JUMPDATE over on their blog, but I couldn’t help comment on one of things that struck Jeff and Ron. They were encouraged by Project Manager Maggie Sodderberg who “said the project team was looking for input from the community in the form of a “Board of Dreamers.”"

More pipe dreams are exactly what the JUMP project doesn’t need.

In the last meeting I attended, the JUMP spokesperson could not state how this non-profit venture was going to stay afloat financially, and very clearly did not understand the development process. Several people asked about access to JUMP, and what the plan was to improve it. The response was the same each time: “I am sure that is getting worked out at the City.” No, Mr. Cuoio, access doesn’t just “get worked out at the City.” If the Simplot Foundation wants some sort of traffic calming devices, crosswalks, lighting, or whatever, it needs to ASK FOR THEM FROM THE APPROPRIATE AGENCY. And that would be ACHD.

I hope to Pete that things are shaping up with the project and that some new light was shed at the meeting at City Hall, but so far, I am afraid. Very afraid.

JUMPDATE! (Update on Simplot’s JUMP project)

As you all know I have been visiting Austin, Texas for the last week so blogging has been sporadic. I have a series of posts planned about that dynamic city, so stay tuned. Before I hit the road, however, I was invited by the IBR’s real estate reporter Dani Grigg to a leads breakfast which featured Simplot Corporation spokesman David Cuoio talking about the JUMP, or “Jack’s Urban Meeting Place” project. I have to admit I don’t share the same level of optimism as the rest of Boise, which has consistently raved about how awesome this is for the city.

I grant you, on its face, a $100 million investment in an area that has been a blight on the entrance to our fine city looks extremely attractive. But after hearing Cuoio - who had almost NO details - speak, I am more afraid than ever. Here’s why.

The one thing that Cuoio was clear on is that JUMP is a non-profit venture. You got that? S-16/Simplot Foundation has no plan to make money from this investment - at least as outlined by Cuoio. I am not a commercial real estate analyst, but I can tell you that the annual operating expenses on a property that size is going to run in the six or seven figures. Are the Simplots prepared to simply write a check every year to cover operating costs? One has to ask because of the propensity of Simplot to “donate” depreciated assets to governmental entities.

Take for example the “gift” of the old Simplot home to the state of Idaho for use as a Governor’s mansion. The home isn’t being used for that purpose, and requires a heady amount of renovation before it is usable as such. Another fine example is Idaho Ice World which the Simplots could not seem to earn any money on, so it was “donated” to the City of Boise. Credit Parks and Recreation Department Head Jim Hall with turning that into a profitable operation for the city. A less capable manager might not have been able to do that which would have left Boise taxpayers with a big white elephant. Finally, several years ago Simplot shuttered an old potato factory in Heyburn and again “donated” it to the county for use as an industrial park. Not that 50 year old buildings and equipment are exactly prime for immediate use.

So this concerns me when the Simplot Corporation now wants to negotiate with the city to perhaps include the library in the project. What happens in five years when the Foundation/Family is sick of writing checks to keep this operation afloat? The Libary! is encircled by a property left in limbo? JUMP becomes a new city park?

To be fair, the Simplot Corporation tentatively plans to move the Food Group and the corporate headquarters to the site which will bring in revenue, but Cuoio was also clear about another thing: This isn’t really the JUMP project so much as it is the JOTC - Jack’s Old Tractor Collection - project.

In a May 23, 2009 Statesman article, Cuoio outlined all kinds of neat things that are planned for JUMP - an amphitheater, studio spaces for artists, and a bunch of indoor and outdoor venues for gatherings. But he again stressed the nature of this facility as a non-profit and said there would be no food service on site for weddings and such, and made no mention of any plans for tour guides, booking agents for the amphitheater, curators, property managers, etc. So what is going on here? Tough to say but what we do know is that Jack has a massive collection of old tractors in storage in Montana, and many of them will be displayed on floors that should house prime office space, according to Cuoio.

Sound a bit funky? I think so.

Finally, vendors interested in providing services to the JUMP/JOTC project can send inquiries to:

JUMP
999 Main St. 10th Floor #1000
Boise, ID 83702

For Sale: Boise Hole

Lake Tahoe Home Builder Robert Capps who acquired the Boise Hole after the courts liquidated Gary Rogers’ holdings in the project, has listed the site at Eighth and Main for $3.95 million dollars.

To recap:

• CCDC purchased the property for about $560,000
• It sold the property for about $260,000
• The property is appraised at about $960,000
• Capps bought a note secured by the property, from Alpha Lending, for $2.4 million

If Capps gets the $3.95 mm for the property, he’ll have pulled off the greatest coup yet.

Takeaways from the “Planning in the West” Conference

If you missed NewWest.net’s “Planning in the West” conference on June 17 and 18, you missed a great opportunity to see a snapshot of regional planning trends. If you want to relive the conference, you can get a DVD of the production at the NewWest website. Below I offer a few of my own takeaways from the conference.

There is a real debate between those who believe we are in a recession, and those who believe the economy has fundamentally changed (the “reset”).

In his morning keynote, Professor Chris Nelson from the University of Utah, discussed his predictions for growth along the Snake River Plain. One of the world’s leading urbanists with 25 books and 200 journal articles to his credit, Nelson’s work is taken seriously. He predicts that the Snake River plain stretching from Ontario, OR to Idaho Falls, ID will in the next 40 years grow to a megaregion of three million people or more. He also predicted a quick rebound to Idaho’s housing market predicting a full recovery in 2011. All of this was quickly dismissed by Mark Rivers.

Rivers, the well known developer of BoDo and the Water Cooler, in his conversation with NewWest’s founder Jonathan Weber opined that Idaho wouldn’t see the growth in the next 20 years that it saw in the last 10. His also believes that the real estate market and real estate finance have fundamentally changed and that economic developers operating in these markets must now operate from an entirely new playbook. He urged more public private partnerships to reach common goals.

What I take away from both Nelson and Rivers is this: it really doesn’t matter who is right - either way, Idaho is in serious trouble because of the next takeaway.

Elected officials are conspicuously absent from the conversation.

Just like the Chamber’s Sun Valley Leadership Conference, the Northwest Energy Summit, Idavation - Idaho’s Innovation Summit, and the ULI conference on transit in the Treasure Valley last month, elected officials failed to show up to this conference which attracted about 175 people. Idaho’s political leadership just isn’t participating in any of the debates that are critical to the future of the State and region. If Chris Nelson is correct in his predictions, powerful legislators like Mike Moyle and Dean Cameron who think they represent rural interests will soon wake up to find that they are part of an urban metropolis. The urban/rural divide will settle itself once and for all without their input, but their inaction now will have heavy consequences for the people in their districts.

If Mark Rivers’ predictions are correct and we are operating in a whole new environment, then we are probably in even worse shape as the ennui that grips our political leadership will most certainly doom Idaho to a second-rate future. It is high-time for Idaho’s elected officials to start not only participating in the debate, but leading the debate. Political leaders aren’t the only one’s at fault, however.

The media was also conspicuously absent.

Big props go to NewWest Publishing which sponsored the event in conjunction with Boise State University’s program for Community and Regional Planning. But there wasn’t a single representative from a mainstream news organization there, and not a column inch or minute of coverage in the local press. Last month’s ULI conference on rail prompted a front-page above-the-fold story which veteran urban beat reporter Cynthia Sewell got dead wrong, prompting a Reader’s View column from the conference keynote panel correcting the story. Was it for this reason that no story appeared covering the issues raised in this conference? Whatever the case, that the media isn’t interested in the conversations that are taking place between large contingents of pubic and private interests on the critical topic of growth is a huge disservice to the state. That the media isn’t asking our political leadership why they aren’t participating is an even bigger disservice.

The news isn’t all bad, however.

The Northwest has has a significant population of incredibly sophisticated people working in the planning, architecture, landscape, and design industries.

Dean of U.S. land use lawyers Christopher Duerksen prophesied that we are now in a new age of planning. We have moved from form-based and smart codes to an era dominated by sustainability. No longer a buzzword, sustainability is now the dominant ethos in city code and municipal comprehensive planning.

Seattle based architect Richard Franko from Mithun - a firm specializing in sustainable architecture, planning, and design - highlighted a plan his firm did for Portland’s Lloyd Crossing. The project team began by investigating how the natural environment performed sans the built environment. The level of scientific inquiry and computer modeling necessary to answer such questions is far beyond what most people would imagine occurs among architects and planners. The work is absolutely incredible.

Questions of sustainability, growth, development, the built environment, and our landscape are being driven from the ground up by a passionate and engaged citizenry.

While political leadership in the state is obviously disengaged, the region’s people are not. Unlike previous eras of urban renewal and redevelopment, this era is being led from the ground up, not the top down. Bingo Barnes provides a great example with his Urbane Farms organization. Urbane Farms is a collaboration of sustainable urban farms located in Boise, Idaho which uses unused portions of property such as backyards, front yards and empty lots (with permission) to grow vegetables, herbs and flowers for sale to local businesses, the public and at local farmer’s markets. Through the website, Bingo and his organization help connect people who want to farm with people who have land. A great example of leading the next generation from the ground up.

Those are a few of my thoughts on the conference. What are yours?

Boise Hole, meet the Fail Whale

This awesome image from my friends at Rizen Creative captures two of my favorite things - digital social networks, and the redevelopment of downtown Boise. The image also perfectly captures the life of the Boise Hole post, January 24, 1987.

Earlier in the week I went downtown to Boise State’s new urban classroom (818 W. Idaho - next to Chico’s) and lectured on the history of the hole. This followed the students being given the history of the Hole by CCDC Director Phil Kushlan.

The real (short) story goes something like this. The Eastman Building (erected 1905) was the last building to stand on the spot at Eighth and Main. It burned down after some homeless folks accidentally set fire to it. That was January 24, 1987.

Five years later, developer David Southers proposed a building on the site and got nowhere. Another five years later, Bellevue, WA based developer Rick Petersen bought the site from CCDC for $260,000 (and change). CCDC had acquired the property 10 years prior for more than twice that.

After borrowing money from a union pension fund to build the “Boise Tower” Petersen refused to hire union workers and guess what? Yep, the financing fell through. Whoda thunk?

Petersen finally lost the site after 10 years of doing nothing but sticking rebar in the ground (see photo). CCDC got the site back after paying Elam and Burke a lot of money. The site then got whisked away by a guy from Texas, Gary Rogers, posing as a friendly McCall retiree.

Even less happened under Rogers. Rogers went bankrupt and a BK judge gave the site to a homebuilder, Robert Capps, from Lake Tahoe.

Facts and figures:

• Site is worth about $960,000
• Capps bought the title to the site for $2.4 million
• Contradictory to what is being said out there, the rebar is not up to code and can’t be used. Cost to bring the hole to grade? About $600,000.

So. Is the Boise Hole “ready to go?” I don’t think so. Just no way to quite make this thing pencil out, especially if you understand some of the changes to the commercial lending market that have happened post “reset.”

Might as well JUMP?!

If you were around way back in 1984 you remember David Lee Roth crooning for Van Halen that “you might as well Jump!” If not, you’ll still get the gist of this story. The Simplot family has finally decided to develop a massive tract of property in Boise just west of what is now referred to as “Bodo.” Unfamiliar? This is the tract of land bordered by Front and Myrtle, and Ninth and Eleventh. Still confused? See the map at the IBR website.

At any rate. I am grateful for a $100 million investment into downtown Boise, but have some concerns.

1) I am never happy when it is a MAJOR news story when it is discovered that Governor Butch “Buy Idaho” Otter buys his coffee from some out of state place (total economic value maybe a couple hundred bucks a year), but then some Idaho company like Simplot turns around and awards a $100 million construction contract to an out of state firm. Priorities, people.

2) The name. “Jack’s Urban Meeting Place?” Are you serious? This isn’t a serious name for a $100 million project, this is silly. Sure, you’ve got the acronym - JUMP - we all get that. Still, it’s silly. There isn’t a single important building or urban space in this state bearing the name of “Simplot.” So wouldn’t it suffice to name the development Simplot Plaza or something along those lines? Even the Simplot world headquarters is in the “One Capital Center” building.

3) Reality check. I’ll believe that we’re going to see $100 million worth of investment when I see the first tenants move in. Boise has a long history of pipe-dream projects not the least of which is the “Hole” at Eighth and Main. This property too has seen numerous proposals and setbacks over the course of 20 years.

4) Design. 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.

There are a few comments on the IBR blog already. What do you think?