Apartment Look

Provident Realty and the Baccuses hired O'Brien Architects to design the planned retail, restaurant and office development . "The goal is to create something iconic both architecturally and as a sense of place," said Mick Granlund, vice president at O'Brien Architects. "We have planned the site to incorporate and build upon an existing grove of beautiful trees." Office towers, hotel Early plans include three office towers of eight to 10 floors, a boutique hotel and more than 50, 000 square feet of retail space to be constructed along Spring Creek. "There are a lot of good brands for restaurants and retail that are now highly aware of Legacy, but they couldn't get into that market," Backes said. "We are giving the retailers and restaurants high visibly while still keeping the walkable, urban environment ." The retail buildings will be clustered in a park-like campus just south of the planned high-rises. "We have the capacity t...

Six years ago, Mike Brown and Casey Lynch stood on Downtown Boise ’s 8th Street and wondered: Why don’t more people live here? Downtown seemed to have everything that a growing percentage of Americans wanted in a place to live. “I mean, there’s all kinds of jobs. There’s a million coffee shops and hair salons and restaurants, and there’s an active street life ,” says Brown, who founded the Los Angeles- based development company LocalConstruct with Lynch in 2008. Casey Lynch, left, and Mike Brown have made their mark in Boise. Provided by LocalConstruct But in 2011, fewer than 4,000 people lived in Downtown’s scattered apartment and condominium buildings and houses. On a typical weekday afternoon , most Downtown workers got in their cars and put the city in the rearview mirror. Brown and Lynch saw an opportunity. They thought Boiseans would trade ample floor space and vaulted ceilings in the suburbs for smaller, high- end Downtown apartments that offered amenities like gyms, a do...

Funny how your tastes change. There once was a time – back when Coolio actually was cool – when I desperately wanted to live in a town with an Applebee’s . I now reside in a metro area with five, and I’m more concerned that a hole-in-the-wall joint like Silla Cafe is closing. The Broad Street eatery , whose teriyaki chicken has been beloved by downtown denizens for more than two decades, is calling it quits next month. Owned and operated by Felton and Tae Mitchell , the literal “mom-and-pop” restaurant serves its last dish at 855 Broad St. on Sept. 14. “We had fun, but we’re ready to retire now,” Tae said. “We’ve been talking about retiring for a couple years now.” She said that decision to retire was hastened, however, by a steep increase in their rent. “It’s almost double,” she said in a phone interview. Last year the building was purchased by Rafik “Rafi” Bassali , a young real estate investor who is becoming somewhat of a downtown property mogul . The owner of The Swank Company...

TRENTON -- The year was 1917 and the Roebling complex's Clark Street Rope Shop in Trenton reopened after being gutted by a fire two years earlier. The new building was ultramodern for its day, with steel trusses, fire-resistant materials and massive windows that flooded the space with natural daylight. It's here where the wire used in Charles Lindbergh's Spirit of St. Louis plane was believed to be manufactured. Now, a century later, the building has been reinvented as the Roebling Lofts with 16-to-24-foot ceilings, 10-foot windows and environmentally friendly features . The latest project by Trenton- based HHG Development , it aims to combine the old with the new. "It was always obvious to us that this was the best development site in Trenton," Michael Goldstein, one of the principals, said during a recent building tour . "We've always had our eyes on it." But it wasn't until January 2011 that the county approved a development agreement with HH...