Also, despite the appearance from the street, it is not just retail. There are many professional offices located in the area with space disappearing fast.

While I won’t argue that the Connector does impeed foot traffic into the area, if this becomes a real issue, I would have to assume that the city and the developer will find a way to fix this (can we all say foot bridge). Developers don’t invest $60+ million just to see it die.

Finally, very large national retailers have chosen this location as the sites for their first entry n the boise market. These companies have some of the most sophisticated financial and market dynamics modeling practices that you can imagine. Simply put…they don’t make mistakes very often in store location.

Jon

There must be a way to dissolve it and transfer whatever assets it holds to another government agency or, oh my gosh, the private sector.

Guardian, can you (or someone else) shed some light on the process?

JQP

I would think that any halfway decent urban plan would start with the most basic element – pedestrian access and human scale.

Mark Rivers may need to fire his Advertizing people for giving us the BoZo, but his understanding of what makes for a good downtown environment is right on target. His development is a damn sight better than the old CinaPlex Odeon (and its parking lot), and BoZo is ten times better than the Crack Hotel.

For my money, the ugliest thing we ever built downtown was the Front / Myrtle Couplet. Ten lanes of blistering concrete, nothing more than a knife at the juglar of the city. Every rotten thing that’s been built downtown since the couplet’s opening is just the predictable outflow of this initial bad decision.

If the convention center is such a good deal then private money like Simplot would be flowing in. Even they know it will not fly without huge subsidies.