Joe Estrella
Idaho Statesman
Aug. 11, 2006
The man who developed the BoDo district in Downtown Boise wants to turn six blocks south of BoDo into an upscale urban neighborhood with condominiums, stores, offices and a new $42 million public library.
As first reported Thursday night on Idahostatesman.com, Mark Rivers' proposed $130 million development, which he calls the Library Blocks, would revitalize an increasingly blighted section of the city south of the Downtown core. The Library Blocks would be twice as large as BoDo, extending west from Capitol Boulevard to Ninth Street and from Myrtle Street south to the the Idaho Anne Frank Human Rights Memorial by the Boise River.
The featured attraction would be the new three-story library on the site of the existing library between 8th Street and Capitol. The new library would cost Boise $2 million a year, but Rivers said the Library Blocks would generate enough new tax revenue to cover the cost.
Rivers said Boise has an "amazing Downtown, just waiting to go to another level with more people living and working in an urban environment." His success with the two-year $60 million BoDo (short for Boise Downtown) redevelopment of the historic 8th Street Marketplace will help attract financing and local government support for the Library Blocks, he said. BoDo is now almost entirely leased.
"You know my philosophy about real estate development: You either go big, or you go home," Rivers said in an exclusive interview with the Idaho Statesman. "My vision about urban development is a neighborhood at a time, not a building at a time. A building at a time takes forever."
Some of the condominiums would be affordable for Downtown workers, and that should help secure support from Boise officials, Rivers said.
"Our ability to create significant housing, especially work-force housing, and a spectacular cultural and community asset will help seal the deal," he said.
If all goes well, Rivers said, construction could begin in mid-2007 and be completed two years later.
Early reaction among civic leaders, academics and lower Downtown business owners ranged from support to caution.
Among the supporters is Boise City Historian Todd Shallatt. He called the overall project the latest piece in a developing lower Downtown landscape that would start at the new Linen District between 13th and 16th streets, extend east through a proposed convention center between 11th and 13th streets and to BoDo between Ninth and Capitol, and reach south through the Library Blocks.
"That area is ripe for redevelopment," Shallatt said. "You have a chance to galvanize the lower Downtown area with almost a new city."
GATEWAY TO DOWNTOWN
With Julia Davis Park and the Boise Art Museum across the street, the Library Blocks would transform Capitol into the "gateway to Downtown" the city has envisioned since the 1940s, Shallatt said.
Rivers hopes to persuade Mayor Dave Bieter and the Capital City Development Corp., the city's urban-renewal agency, to join the project. Rivers says the project is "doable" because all of the properties are owned by him, the city or CCDC.
"You don't have to try and get 10 different landowners on a single block to agree to something," he said. "You have three parties that have a history of working together."
Bieter is reserving judgment.
"It's an exciting (overall) project, because the library system has not been adequate since I was 14 years old," Bieter told the Statesman. "But we have to do our due diligence on how to pay for this."
Bieter said a new library would help meet a vital need and shore up an inadequate city service. The city has hired a consultant to come up with "three or four scenarios" that could be used to solicit public comment on the proposed new library, he said.
Economic benefits
The blocks to be redeveloped include businesses like the Renewal consignment-furniture store and a 24-hour FedEx/Kinko's photocopying shop. But they also include empty, deteriorating warehouse buildings. Rivers said they generate enough tax revenue now to pay for one city police officer.
"The seven acres of land owned by the city, CCDC and myself will generate $55,000 in property taxes in 2006," he said. "With my plan, by 2009, those properties will generate over $2 million every year. We ought to be in the business of recycling property and generating tax revenue out of our key parcels."
Boise State University economic professor Don Holley agreed.
"The economic impact would be some multiple of the cost of building the project," he said. "And not just in the Downtown area. The jobs created would be concentrated Downtown, but the impact would be throughout the Boise Valley because the person (working Downtown and) living in Meridian spends their money in Meridian."
Tom Lay, executive director of Neighborhood Housing Services, a nonprofit that develops affordable housing throughout the Treasure Valley, said government funding would be used to provide subsidized work-force housing for 40 families earning up to 140 percent of Idaho's median family income of $51,000.
"We're talking about people who have good jobs, but are still finding it hard to find a home," Lay said. "We're also going to be talking to major employers in the area about helping their employees own a Downtown condo that would be priced under $200,000."
BUSINESSES BACK PROJECT
An informal survey of lower Downtown businesses found support for the project.
At Scooters of Boise, 701 Fulton St., sales and marketing manager Valerie Aker said the development would encourage consumers to cross Myrtle Street during Downtown events like Live After 5 and First Thursday.
"Right now a lot of people don't know that there is something else below Myrtle," Aker said.
Bringing in new housing would build on the recent Downtown residential construction that is discouraging people "from just leaving Downtown at 5 p.m.," she said.
Mike Fitzgerald, owner of the TableRock Brewpub & Grill, 705 Fulton St., said that just as BoDo removed the "invisible wall" that prevented consumers from crossing Front Street, Rivers' new development would reinvigorate a lower Downtown area that been waiting for such plan for more than 10 years.
"Anybody who isn't excited about an upgraded and vibrant Downtown is a little crazy," he said.
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