Ada County commissioners hauled Shakespeare Festival leaders before them. This is why

Idaho’s leading theater company has forayed into conservation, with aims to create a nature reserve that abuts its property. But that newly acquired land raised questions for the Ada County Commission, which has been granting the nonprofit property tax exemptions for its dramatic offerings to the public.

The County Commission invited Idaho Shakespeare Festival leaders to a meeting this month to discuss whether its expanded holdings still merit nonprofit status.

“If conservation is going to become one of your missions in the Shakespeare Festival,” Commissioner Ryan Davidson said, “when you file next year that should probably be something that’s incorporated into your new filing as an additional focus.”

Davidson said the county must consider how much revenue an organization has compared with the discounted or free services it provides to the public.

Called the Gateway Reserve, the 12-acre property is next to the Shakespeare Festival’s outdoor amphitheater along East Warm Springs Avenue.

After moving around Boise for 20 years at three others locations, the theater company settled along the Boise River in the late 1990s, where it puts on plays during Boise’s warm months. The land was purchased from the Idaho Foundation for Parks and Lands, which controls several hundred adjoining acres known as the Barber Pool.

As the theater company put down permanent roots, it sought to secure a buffer in every direction to protect the delicate acoustics of an outdoor theater from loud neighbors — and vice versa.

That effort has become increasingly difficult as development has ballooned in Southeast Boise.

Supporters of the Shakespeare theater staved off a residential development in the 2010s that would have brought houses within a few hundred yards of the theater.

“That created an existential threat to Shakespeare,” said Fred Boelter, a Shakespeare board member, at the commission meeting on Aug. 14.

Last year, the theater took control of the 12 acres that had been set for development. The land was initially purchased from the Triplett family through the Foundation for Parks and Lands in 2019. The theater has since been sharing conservation management with the foundation.

Last year’s acquisition was part of a new, negotiated deal with the same foundation, which gave control of an additional 30 acres to the theater, as well as restrictive easements on 20 more. That deal also allowed the foundation to acquire 35 acres of riparian habitat upriver to the east, Shakespeare’s Managing Director Mark Hofflund told the Idaho Statesman.

Instead of new houses, the Festival plans to turn the 12 acres, which was formerly two sewage lagoons, into a nature area called the Gateway Reserve.

It’s those newly acquired parcels that raised questions for county commissioners, who have so far offered property tax-exempt status to the nonprofit. Not having conservation listed in the organization’s bylaws could lead the commission to revoke that status in the future.

“That’s why we’re having this meeting,” said Commissioner Thomas Dayley.

“It’s clear to me that the Idaho Shakespeare Festival is more than a theater at this point,” said Commissioner Rod Beck. “You probably should have put that in your application.”

In a text message, a spokesperson for the commission, Elizabeth Duncan, said the commission “wants them to continue to qualify” and held the meeting to explain what the Idaho Supreme Court requires for property-tax exemptions to be granted.

The county reviews tax exemptions each year and granted Shakespeare an exemption this year, as it has every year.

‘Upholding the mission of an outdoor theater’

At the Gateway Reserve, Grounds and Facilities Manager Taylor Davis said there have already been black bears, moose, bobcats, bald eagles, screech owls, ibis, river otters, mule deer and other species.

In 2019, after the sewage waste had been removed, the property was seeded with native seeds.

“It really is a remarkable achievement to have nature just reclaim it so quickly and have it be a spot that rare birds are frequenting,” said Randy Van Dyck, a local artist who was commissioned by the Shakespeare Festival to do a painting based on the reserve.

For the festival, the bottom line is keeping the amphitheater in a neighborhood where productions can thrive.

“At least the amphitheater is protected now, even if we have to start paying taxes,” Hofflund said.

Boelter said the Festival is considering creating a separate conservancy that would manage the reserve, leaving all thespian matters to the Shakespeare Festival. The new nonprofit could help keep the Festival tax exempt without changing its bylaws.

Hofflund told the Statesman that the property could be managed in a number of ways.

“It’d be great if there were a public manager of some kind, or a nonprofit with an environmental mission, to take some of this on,” he said. “But in the meantime, we think that we’re upholding the mission of an outdoor theater to control its boundaries for the benefit of 75,000 audience people who come every night, and they don’t need to hear a lawn mower or backyard beer party — as fun as they are — in the tomb scene of Romeo and Juliet. Nor do kids doing homework who need to go to sleep at night need to hear a train whistle at the beginning of Les Miserables.”