remained sturdy, proving their value. “There was an assumption that it was cheaper to tear down and build new,” Watts said. “There was a gradual realization that there is economic value in historic buildings. It went from ‘we’re going to demolish this’ to ‘well, here we have some possible historic buildings. Are they historic? How do we incorporate them into our project?’” In 1985, Kempthorne was elected mayor of Boise—partially on a platform of placing the mall farther out toward the edge of town. By this point, the downtown mall was basically over. Not because BRA had abandoned the idea—they were still as dedicated as ever to the concept—but because market forces were decidedly against the idea. “The major retailers had just said, ‘No. It will not work and we will not come,’” Kempthorne said. “Apparently, the attitude [of BRA and City Hall] was ‘if we don’t give you any other options, you’ll have to.’” Kempthorne disagreed with the prevailing wisdom, arguing, “We’re going to lift those restrictions and instead we will let the marketplace work. We want to open up downtown to development and we also want to build a retail mall, but it will not be downtown. “That was really the key debate for the campaign for mayor,” Kempthorne said. Now that they were free to build the mall where they wished, the retailers soon agreed to come to Boise and create Boise Towne Square, a more than 1,000,000-square-foot structure—just as BRA had envisioned it—just not in the location they had imagined. That left the question of what to do about downtown. “A lot of folks who were part of the old urban renewal block wanted me to keep tearing down buildings in the name of progress ... I said ‘Absolutely not. We’ve torn enough of our history down,’” Kempthorne said. Kempthorne’s first project for urban renewal was almost the exact opposite of the old buy-and-demolish approach. Instead of tearing down a historic building, they renovated the Alexander Building, named for early Idaho Governor and Boise Mayor Moses Alexander. During this same period, Kempthorne gathered the various public agencies (including the City Council, the Ada County Highway District and BRA) that had a role in the future of the lot once planned for the mall. “I asked all of those elected officials to come to a meeting and to please bring their attorneys with them. We all sat down at the same table, and all the media was there.” And Kempthorne said to the group, “‘Now, because we’re going to discuss real property we can go into executive session and I’m going to ask each of the attorneys to confirm that while we have these discussions of real property that we can go into executive session.’ [Each of them confirmed it.] And the media politely stepped out. “‘Now,’ I said, ‘it is my intent that we do not leave until we have finally resolved how we are going to build this convention center. Let me tell you, the people who can make this happen are in this room, and the next time we open that door it is either to announce to the community and the media that we have the success of a convention center or that we are all failures.’ “After we opened the door, after we had some very candid and frank conversations,” Kempthorne said. “We had agreement and WWW. B OISEWEEKLY.C O M
we had a convention center.” The initial steps had been taken to build the Boise Centre. “I think the greatest thing we built in rebuilding our city was cooperation,” Kempthorne added. On Jan. 22, 1987, a vision came to save the Eastman Building. Local developer Larry Leasure announced plans to incorporate the building into a pedestrian-oriented retail and arts complex. The Eastman, a building long at the center of the battle to preserve historic downtown Boise, was to be restored and preserved. Two days later, the building caught fire and in short order burned to the ground. Police believed arson to be the cause; someone had finally managed to level the building that had eluded BRA for so long. Since the Kempthorne administration and a 1985 study by the American Institute of Architects urging smaller projects, urban renewal in Boise has treated the city’s history with respect and has restored almost as much of the city as it decimated in the 1970s. Everything is different, even the name of the agency changed in 1989 after funding shifted from a federal to a state mechanism a few years prior. It is now the Capital City Development Corporation. In recent years, CCDC’s efforts have focused in part on supporting the reuse of historic buildings and re-creating traditional downtown streetscapes—particularly in BODO and the Linen District. Both of the projects have relied primarily upon private funding. In BODO, CCDC has concentrated on building traditional streetscapes focused on pedestrians and bicyclists along with aiding in the construction of a “lifestyle retail center.” The area’s mix of reused historic structures and new construction have jived to create an active extension to Boise’s Downtown. The Linen District, named for the old American Linen Building, is aimed at blending “the fabric of existing historical buildings with an extension of the culturally vibrant North End neighborhood,” according to a vision statement. While the district includes several existing structures, one of the earliest steps in the project was demolishing a 12,700-square-foot cinder block building attached to the American Linen Building to construct 36 parking spaces. Prior to developers proposing the Linen District in 2005, the area was designated for suburban-style sprawl. Although the district has yet to reach its potential, it represents a step toward a future more like Boise’s past. Even today’s arguably most controversial economic development proposal—the streetcar— revolves around restoring rather than removing something from the city’s history. There are two key differences between today’s efforts and those of the past. The first is federal funding: There isn’t as much of it anymore. It may seem like an odd advantage, but it forces the second key change in urban renewal practices: considering market forces. “[In the 1960s and ’70s], you had a lot of federal money to do things that you can’t do now. They bought a vast amount of the building stock and tore it down to say, ‘The site is ready for you,’” said CCDC Executive Director Phil Kushlan. “It’s probably not even a model that’s appropriate anymore, and there’s a question of whether it was appropriate then, either.
BOISEweekly | AUGUST 4–10, 2010 | 15