Lawmakers look to Little as sale of ITD’s State Street campus remains on the rocks

While lawmakers forge ahead with plans to challenge the University of Idaho’s purchase of a private online university, the Idaho Legislature has also taken aim at the sale of the Idaho Transportation Department’s Boise campus to housing and commercial developers last year.

Members of the Joint-Finance Appropriations Committee declined to fund ITD’s relocation to a new office on Chinden Boulevard, instead appropriating money for the agency to renovate its existing 44-acre campus along State Street, which was damaged in a flood in 2022. House lawmakers have separately advanced a bill to cancel the scheduled sale.

House Speaker Mike Moyle, R-Star, told the Idaho Statesman by phone that he wants Gov. Brad Little to direct ITD to pull back on the sale and renovate the building instead.

“The Legislature is sending a pretty strong message,” Moyle said, that lawmakers “don’t think it’s a good idea to sell it.”

ITD had asked the budget committee for $50.3 million to relocate its headquarters, plus $6 million to furnish the new Chinden Boulevard campus, according to the agency’s budget requests. Its large campus, which extends from State Street to the Boise River, is widely considered to be prime real estate that could undergird Boise’s plans to become a denser, more urban city.

But Sen. Kevin Cook, R-Idaho Falls, instead proposed Friday in a meeting of the committee to give the agency $32.5 million to renovate the existing State Street headquarters, which has been arranged to be sold. Cook also moved to ask the state to revoke the sale, and a majority of the committee voted in favor. The appropriation has yet to be voted on by either chamber.

Little’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Though the Department of Administration announced the $52 million sale to three Idaho and Utah-based developers in September, it is still pending, according to spokesperson Kim Rau. She declined to comment on how the property would be affected by the budget committee’s decision not to appropriate the money to move the campus. ITD is “continuing conversations with the Legislature” about the property, spokesperson John Tomlinson told the Statesman by email.

The campus also houses a historic steam shovel and other property from the State Historical Society.

Hawkins Cos., the Pacific Cos. and FJ Management are the developers who agreed to purchase the property. The president of Hawkins Cos. could not immediately be reached for comment.

Moyle said he had asked for but has not seen a contract and isn’t sure if one has been signed.

The speaker introduced legislation in January to delete the statute that allowed state officials to hand the property to the Department of Administration for a sale in the first place. Moyle previously told the Statesman that he opposes the windfall that redevelopment of the site could bring to Boise’s urban renewal agency, the Capital City Development Corp., and that the sale did not have enough public input. He said the state expected to get close to $100 million for the property and was disappointed that the agreed-upon price was only half that.

Urban renewal agencies pull in increases in property taxes from rising values within their districts, and use the funds to invest in infrastructure and development projects.

Moyle said he thinks that the Department of Administration broke the law by not notifying the Legislature of the impending sale, and that it may have not notified other agencies, too.

Though it passed the House, Moyle’s bill has not had a hearing in the Senate, and Sen. Jim Guthrie, R-McCammon, told the Statesman by phone that the bill is in a “holding pattern” while he awaits input from the governor and Senate leadership before deciding whether to move it forward.

Guthrie said he’s concerned that the costs of relocating state property will be more than the $52 million the state got for the sale, but that at the same time he doesn’t yet know the extent of the damage at the building, and what the full costs to rehabilitate it will be.

The flood caused extensive damage, according to previous Statesman reporting, and prompted ITD to temporarily move its headquarters to the former Hewlett-Packard campus on Chinden Boulevard, which the state purchased in 2018. ITD’s board voted to sell the State Street property in August and wants to move to the Hewlett-Packard location permanently.

Guthrie said he is also worried about the Legislature targeting a specific sale. He would prefer for Moyle’s bill to apply only to purchases in the future.

“I think that is exactly why we’re being a little cautious with this bill, to see how the sales agreement progresses” and “maybe (get) some guidance from the governor’s office,” Guthrie said.

Guthrie said he doesn’t know the details of any contracts with the developers or whether there could be any penalties if the state pulls out.

“In this case, it’s probably better to be a little bit methodical or tempered in our approach,” he said.

Moyle said his bill would cancel the ITD sale if it were passed imminently. But if the sale goes through and the bill is passed afterward, it would apply only to future transactions, which would afterward be overseen by the State Board of Land Commissioners and would be subject to a public hearing process, he said.

Little told reporters last month that he was concerned about “reputational risk” to the state if officials back out of an already agreed-upon sale, though he said he wishes the state had received more money for the property.