In the East End, a plan for a home on Mobley Drive off Warm Springs Avenue spurred a group of neighbors to start organizing what the city calls a conservation district. The house would have been two stories and narrow, while most nearby homes are single-level ranch-style structures built in the 1950s. — Idaho Statesman
A 16-year-old ordinance in Boise that allows for the establishment of conservation districts is coming back in favor as neighborhood groups have figured out they can use it to quash projects they don't like. Conservation districts are similar to historic ones in that they define development through the regulation of architectural styles, height, massing, and uses of buildings. Through their establishment, property owners decide the district’s contours and which uses, building types or design features are allowed.
In Boise, such ordinances have been used to successfully restrict massive parking lots and prevent the demolition of homes. Now, in the East End neighborhood, community members are pushing for a conservation district in order to curb the building of a two-story, 30-foot-wide home that would clash with the street's dominating midcentury architecture. A hearing was scheduled with the Planning and Zoning Commission for Monday, but the developers withdrew their application beforehand citing their desire to work with neighbors to resolve their concerns. Though this battle has been won, the neighborhood association has said they will continue the process of establishing the district.
4 Comments
Thanks to these NIMBYs their property values will drop once it becomes impossible to sell renovate or expand their homes.
Value systems are relative. Value systems based solely on money aren't worth shit, which is exactly why we have such a shitty built environment.
if people what to conserve their neighborhood, what’s wrong with that. Just build somewhere else. There’s plenty of room in Idaho
First, this article is inaccurate. The photo depicted is not Boise, Idaho. It was taken somewhere else (CVS has grown very unpopular in many other cities in America, so it probably is somewhere in the South). It isn’t Boise. There aren’t that many all-brick buildings in Boise, and people don’t hang out on the street corner in shorts and t-shirts in December, when it’s cold as hell here. I recognize no one in the photo. So your posting of this photo as Boise is completely inaccurate from the get-go.
December 2017 is when our own local CVS issue broke, but the concerns were much more complex than this article implies. CVS’s first-time entry into Idaho was heavy-handed and disrespectful of local values. The proposed CVS at 16th and State Streets would have erected a fourth(!) drug store in a three-block area, over-serving a neighborhood already well-served with pharmacies. (An empty and re-purpose-able vacant Walgreen’s pharmacy was only a couple of miles down State Street, just waiting for a replacement tenant, but CVS wasn’t interested in using an already-constructed pharmacy building. It wanted to chew into an established and stable neighborhood.)
The proposed project would have brought an eighth(!) drive-through to a neighborhood, increasing auto traffic. It would have displaced or demolished three historic Craftsman homes. And, if that’s not enough, it would have demolished “The Arcade,” an modest apartment complex housing 23 lower-income singles, families, and immigrants, throwing them on the street in a town that’s got a huge housing-affordability problem.
Really good optics, CVS, for doing all of this around Christmastime!
I was there. My information is first-hand and it is accurate. There are valid reasons why residents of neighborhoods are fighting back against this sort of commercial exploitation.
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