Nampa OKs 200+ apartments for affordable housing. Neighbors, school district oppose them
Housing advocates are considering the Nampa City Council’s latest move to reverse its previous denial of a hotly debated apartment complex a win.
The Northwest Village, which consists of 264 apartments, is on its way to the northeast corner of Karcher and Sundance roads, near Karcher and Nampa-Caldwell Boulevard, despite hours of public opposition and dozens of pages of letters from neighbors.
The Nampa City Council was originally divided over the apartment complex, because they knew they needed more affordable housing but heard neighborhood concerns about congestion. Council members denied the project in a 3-2 vote in February, but this month, faced with the decision again, they supported it.
Council members Daryl Bruner and Natalie Jangula reversed their votes to support the apartments. They said they believed the developer addressed the traffic concerns with improvements to Middleton Road. Bruner just asked that the developers “didn’t hurry” to rent the apartments out before road widening improvements could be done.
Apartment project helps agriculture, housing
Council Member Dale Reynolds, who supported the project the first time the council voted on it, said the council members had recently attended an agricultural forum, where they learned the importance of developing areas within the city rather than moving outside the city to consume more agricultural land. The Northwest Village is an “infill” project, which means it is surrounded by existing development and accessible from city infrastructure.
Reynolds said Nampa’s two large employers, Lactalis and Materne Gogo Squeeze, are looking to each add 150 employees in the coming years.
“They both expressed that the employees they hire do not want to own homes and they are looking at places to rent,” Reynolds said, adding that the city doesn’t provide enough rental housing.
He supported the project because of its location and ability to provide housing for lower-income Nampa residents.
“We don’t set the rents, but when we reach that saturation point, that will control rents,” Reynolds said. “When we get there, rents will come down and it will be more affordable and that is what we are looking for. Now there is a shortage, so I think it’s important that we get closer to that saturation point.”
The Northwest Village apartments were proposed by TV Holdings LLC and Zion Ventures LLC. TV Holdings is run by Mark Bottles, an Eagle real estate agent. Zion Ventures is run by Riley Verner, an employee at Bottles’ real estate office.
The apartments are expected to fill 11 buildings on the northeast corner of Karcher and Sundance roads, on a vacant lot next to a Maverik convenience store, about one-third of a mile west of Karcher’s intersection with Nampa-Caldwell Boulevard.
The developers say they would charge market rents. The average rent for a studio apartment is $1,000, a one-bedroom $1,430, and a two-bedroom $1,450 as of Monday, according to Rent.com, a listing service. Such services typically calculate averages from their own listings. Zumper, another service, places the one-bedroom average at $960 for a studio, $1,245 for a one-bedroom, and $1,385 for a two-bedroom.
Jean Mutchie, former Nampa City Council member and program manager for St. Luke’s Children’s Hospital, supported the apartment project during both hearings.
“We have far too many people who come into this community who cannot participate in the American dream,” she said. “They have a right to that American dream. For them, maybe it is multifamily homes. They may have to rent a place because they don’t get a choice at this point.”
Neighbors, school district opposed to apartments
Another Nampa resident, Paulette Blaseg, wrote to the council in support of the apartments, calling it “a good location for an apartment complex.”
But Blaseg’s letter was accompanied by dozens of letters in opposition, mostly stating concerns about traffic and high-density housing in their neighborhoods. Many of the residents who were opposed lived outside of Nampa city limits.
Rachel Bassett, a Nampa resident, was one of those in opposition.
“We have watched this small rural town become overcrowded and already have far too many apartment complexes and subdivisions in this area,” she wrote in an email. “The traffic has become almost unbearable and impossible to navigate. There are more accidents on these roads in the last year than I’ve seen in the last 10 years total.”
The Vallivue School District, also plagued by overcrowding, opposed the development too. Developers tried to soften the blow by donating $1,000 per apartment to the district, which totaled $264,000.
Still, Joey Palmer, director of federal and state programs for Vallivue, wrote a letter opposing the additional residents.
“East Canyon Elementary School is 75 students over capacity,” he wrote. East Canyon would be one of the elementary schools where students living in the apartments would attend. “The neighboring elementary schools are also experiencing the impact of growth, so a boundary change to meet the demands of this particular development is not a solution.”
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