It's A Deal! Boise Tower Will Rise From The Pit

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It's a deal! Boise Tower will rise from the pit

$80 million, 25-story building will get a new name, to boot

The tallest building in Idaho still will be built at 8th and Main in Boise, with construction beginning possibly later this year on an $80 million, 25-story retail/condominium project that will have 150 hotel rooms.

It just won't be called the Boise Tower.

The developer who took over the project Tuesday said his company will change the name to put some distance between the new building and the negative memories conjured up by repeated failures to get the Boise Tower built. Developer Gary D. Rogers declined to say what names are being considered.
Capital City Development Corp.'s board voted unanimously Tuesday to name Charterhouse Boise Downtown Properties LLC of McCall as the new builder of a redesigned project on the lone remaining undeveloped parcel of land in Boise's downtown core district.

The vote also ended Washington state developer Rick Peterson's decade-long struggle to get the $63 million Boise Tower off the ground.
After Monday's vote, Rogers said the cost of the soon-to-be-renamed project has risen in recent years.

"We all know what's happening with construction costs," said Rogers, the Charterhouse founder. "I wish it was still going to cost $63 million, but it's not."

Rogers said Charterhouse will help finance the project by bringing in an unnamed financial fund as a partner.
News that the long-stalled redevelopment project is moving forward comes as downtown Boise is experiencing a condo-construction boom. At least 286 units in nine other projects are planned or in progress. Last month, developer Scott Kimball said he was building The Aspen, a 17-story, 70-unit condo project on Front Street just two blocks away from the 8th-and-Main site.

The new structure would be Charterhouse's first Idaho project. Rogers' partner, James T. Knighton, predicted it will take at least six months to redesign the project and up to 24 months to build. That would set a completion date no earlier than mid-2008.
The first two floors will be for retail space and support facilities. Four floors will be devoted to parking, and six floors to the hotel. The top 12 floors will be condos. The condominiums - as many as 86 - will sell for between $400,000 and $1.5 million, Rogers said.

Several hotel chains have expressed interest in owning the new hotel space, he said.

The addition of 150 hotel rooms in the unnamed structure will give the city more than 1,300 rooms within a mile of the convention center, said Pat Rice, general manager of the Boise Centre on The Grove.
"It certainly can't hurt. And it will give some of the dated hotel properties downtown a reason to upgrade in order to compete," Rice said.

Rogers said the attractiveness of the site was evident by the fact that a joint venture between Boise's two largest downtown landlords said at the 11th hour Monday that it was still interested in pursuing the project.
"There isn't a developer in America that doesn't want to do this deal," he said. "It just needed somebody that would step up and get it done."

The original Boise Tower has been on hold almost since ground was broken in 2001. Its open pit and partially finished foundation was a constant sore spot for frustrated downtown business owners who complained that it hurt the city's image and drove away customers.

"This will be a blessing for Boise," said Gino Vuolo, owner of Gino's Italian Ristorante across 8th street from the undeveloped Boise Tower. "We've got people coming here looking to buy land and property, and this hole looked bad for us."
The naming of a new developer was the result of a three-way deal negotiated between Charterhouse, CCDC and Peterson.

Under the terms of the agreement, CCDC will receive $950,000 to cover damages, legal fees and costs associated with a 2004 lawsuit it filed to try and oust Peterson as developer. CCDC, Boise's urban renewal agency, sold Peterson the land.
Peterson will receive an undisclosed sum to release a $12 million deed of trust he holds on the property. The deed protected what Peterson said was his investment in the project.

CCDC attorney Rick Boardman told the agency's board that the agreement would allow the three parties to avoid an April 10 court date.

"One of the significant benefits of this transaction would be to avoid years of additional litigation," Boardman said.
CCDC Executive Director Phil Kushlan said the motivation for reaching an out-court-agreement was the January decision by District Judge Kathryn Sticklen that ordered Peterson to turn over title to the property. She ruled that Peterson had violated a 1997 development agreement requiring that he complete the project by the agreed deadline.

Peterson could have tried to force a sale of the Boise Tower property, but would have had to demonstrate how much money he had tied up in the project.
"Industry estimates are that maybe he has $2.5 million in it," CCDC commissioner David Eberle said. "But at least now we're one step closer to getting this built and can get some money out of it instead of spending money on it."