Idaho’s Newest Planned Community Continues to Move Forward

Avimor and More

Controversial community’s developer says it’s all but a sure thing; others could be on the way

Avimor after, according to a projection on the developer’s Web site

For opponents of sprawl, the prospect of 680 high-end homes– with the promise of more–getting plunked down in the foothills north of Eagle qualifies as a bummer. But what might be more depressing is the likelihood that their protests, made at a public meeting last week and to be continued at another one next month, are all but moot.

By the time opponents reach the microphone at the January 11 public hearing before Ada County Commissioners to testify against the project, the chances of them actually stopping the massive project are slim at best, most involved with the project agree. Of course, this is through no fault of the opponents.

Nor is it necessarily the result of schemes of the developers, Arizona-based SunCor Development Company. Suncor did what developers have done as long as builders have been turning up soil: they saw a market for their product, found a location and waited until market and political conditions were ripe.

They began in 2003, when a genial Canadian-born planner-turned-development-manager named Bob Taunton was asked by his bosses at Suncor, a multimillion-dollar subsidiary of Pinnacle West, holding company for Arizona Public Service, to spearhead a new development in Idaho. Taunton had been the manager of a well-heeled Suncor community outside Santa Fe, New Mexico, and confessed, "I didn’t know anything about Boise."

By Shea Andersen

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