Neighbors were told this site would become new Boise-area park. Now this is happening

Eagle residents were expecting a 34.5-acre park with three baseball fields, a play area and a large dog park. Now the new Eagle mayor and City Council are holding a public auction for the land.

West Eagle Park was planned on farmland at the southwest corner of Floating Feather and Meridian roads. Former Eagle Mayor Stan Ridgeway said that when he left office in 2019, the park was “ready to be built.”

City documents show that in 2018, the council gave HECO Engineers of Garden City the go-ahead to prepare engineering designs including road and infrastructure improvements. The cost estimate for those plans was $178,858.

But Mayor Jason Pierce, who defeated Ridgeway in the 2019 city election, and a new City Council decided to put the acreage up for auction. On Tuesday, May 25, the city posted a legal ad in the Idaho Statesman announcing that the auction would take place this Tuesday, June 8, with bids starting at $5 million.

The auction marks another in a series of reversals Pierce has made in decisions and purchases previously decided by Ridgeway and the former council. Among them are the auction of the Eagle Landing property and reconsideration of the prior regime’s refusal to annex the Avimor planned community north of Eagle.

Mayor says predecessor ‘misspent’ money on park

At a council meeting May 25, Pierce said the city needed to sell the park to replenish funds that had been used to buy the property. Pierce said the city paid $2.5 million to buy the land.

He said Ridgeway and the former council “misspent” park impact fees to buy the park. Impact fees are fees that cities can charge developers on new development for the impact the new development will make on the city’s financial resources. Park impact fees are charged specifically to buy and improve parks.

Pierce said the city would have to spend an additional $2 million to develop the park. He also said it would take five to seven years of work to get the park up and running.

“We are working with other developers on the west side ... to give us the land so that we can go ahead and build the parks,” Pierce said. “We’ll have this money that, I think, would have been spent wrongly, to put into parks and do things faster, so we can bring those amenities into the community quicker.”

Pierce did not say if he or city officials had land already in mind for a park. He did not respond to emailed questions from the Idaho Statesman.

Land zoned for houses

Pierce said the land to be auctioned is zoned to allow for two homes per acre. That means it could be developed as a subdivision.

He told residents during the March 25 council meeting that he did not think the Floating Feather property was a good location for a park.

“There are large lots out there, and people recreate on their own properties,” Pierce said. “Floating Feather already has a ton of traffic. It would drive between one thousand and two thousand cars there per day.”

Some residents in western Eagle subdivisions disagree. Julie McCallson, who spoke at the council meeting, said she has family members in the area who were looking forward to having a park.

“We were all promised a park. There are no parks over there,” McCallson said. “There is nothing out there.”

Terry Lundon, who lives within walking distance of the proposed park, said she was looking forward to having it in her neighborhood, especially the dog park.

She said people in Eagle are used to seeing open space, but with all of the new subdivisions off Floating Feather Road, that space is disappearing.

‘We want respite from rooftop after rooftop’

West Eagle residents don’t require a 30-plus acre park, Lundon said: “We just want to have a small respite from rooftop after rooftop.”

Pierce said PetIQ, an Eagle company, recently paid to build a 2-1/2-acre dog park that just opened for public use at the Eagle Bike Park portion of the Ada/Eagle Sports Complex on Horseshoe Bend Road, north of Floating Feather. That’s about four miles east of the proposed park site.

According to Ridgeway, the city went through a request-for-proposals process to buy the park land. He said that during his term, the city filled in an irrigation ditch on the property and completed road improvements along Floating Feather. To do that, the council drew funds from the city’s budget reserve, Ridgeway said.

“They are using (the funding) as an excuse to sell the land,” Ridgeway said.

The auction marks another in a series of reversals Pierce has made in decisions and purchases previously decided by Ridgeway and the former council. Among them, are the auction of the Eagle Landing property and reconsideration of the prior regime’s refusal to annex the Avimor planned community north of Eagle.