She spent her teens in a Garden City trailer. Now she tears trailers down to build anew.
Read more here:
http://www.idahostatesman.com/latest...#storylink=cpy
Quote:
By Sven Berg
sberg@idahostatesman.com
May 14, 2018 10:21 PM
A 33-year-old could hold the keys to an increasingly desirable piece of Garden City's eastern end.
Her dream is big: to turn 34th Street between Chinden and the river into a cool, edgy version of Hyde Park in Boise's North End or Bown Crossing in Southeast Boise. She wants to finish transforming the street by this time next year. By mid-2019, she wants to add townhouses, cottages and other compact homes on the streets around 34th.
Today, Ball owns the equivalent of about 40 5,000-square-foot lots in the East End, 12 of which are on 34th Street. She said she'll plan, plat, design and secure city authorization to build the projects. But she'll sell the projects to builders to finish the job.
On the aesthetics spectrum, she wants 34th Street as far from The Village at Meridian as possible.
"I love what Garden City was," she said. "I love that it was the auto-body, manufacturing, American companies with a little bit of ill repute and a whole lot of weird."
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Gotta respect the hustle, sounds like she read The Art of the Deal. Great to see someone trying to grab the bull by the horns and really push the development of a funky river district.
I think she's a bit misguided on trying to capitalize on the auto-body, manufacturing history of Garden City, because that's what made it crappy and undesirable in the first place. This is why we should develop for the future and not the past or present. Though, if we really wanted to pay homage to Garden City's roots, it would be developed with an Asian influence and hanging gardens, since that's why it's called Garden City and Chinden (Chinese Garden), and not Oil Change City.
Plans potentially sound a little thin on the density. The higher the density, the better any businesses will do and life it will bring considering 34th is not a major vehicular connection, so it's going to need to heavily rely on creating a sense of place that people will seek out. Bound to be interesting either way. Love watching Garden City change.