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A Townsite Called Mayfield

BOISE, ID. – Next month public hearings get underway for one of two major developments near Mountain Home. Homeowners are concerned about both but especially over what’s called the Mayfield Townsite. It’s a development that would put some fourteen thousand homes in the middle of open space.   

Scott Ki:  “I’m on a bluff overlooking the Mayfield Townsite. It’s just a few miles off Interstate 84 and as far as the eye can see, it’s just grass, rolling foothills, weeds, a few trees near the Indian Creek.” 

A developer wants to build a planned community in the middle of this rustic area. Marty Goldsmith envisions a dozen neighborhoods with names like Homestead and Reliance built out over fifty years.  It sounds like a project suited for Las Vegas or Phoenix – about eight square miles of desert transformed into homes for thousands of people.  It’s actually a thirty minute drive from Boise.

Lori Atkins:  ”I just like the country.  I don’t like the hubbub of the city.  I don’t like the traffic, the noise.” 

Lori Atkins moved here ten years ago. 

Lori Atkins:  ”It’s nice and quiet out here other than the wind.”

Large windows in Atkins’ dining room overlook a flood plain just beyond her backyard.  That’s near the Western edge of what will become Mayfield Townsite.

Lori Atkins:  ”You can’t really see it too well, but it kind of is just past the ranch.  And I think that’s it on the hill there, where you can see it going over the hill; the lower one.  I don’t know that that upper one is Indian Creek Road.  And both of them dead end into Mayfield Road.” 

This is wide open country, that’s home to lots of wildlife.  Atkins has a photo in her entrance way to prove it…. hundreds of elk she explains move through this land every winter.

Lori Atkins:  ”They would come across these hills over here from the East, every night between 4 and 5 PM. It was still light you know so you can still see them.  And they’d just single file just toodle down here and they’d graze down here in the flood plain.”

Her neighbors, the Wilsons, don’t like the project either.  They live next to the road that leads to the Townsite.  Gene and his wife are retirees from New Mexico. They came out here about six years ago. 

Gene Wilson:  ”What I’m worried about is if it doesn’t succeed in its entirety, what are we going to have left and what are we going to have to deal with out here.”

Wilson doesn’t think the project should have been approved by Elmore County Commissioners.  They voted two to one to allow Mayfield Townsite to go ahead with about seventy conditions.  The developer needs to fulfill all these conditions or the county can revoke the Townsite’s zoning application. That means the land could revert back to agriculture use.  Alan Christy is Elmore County’s Growth and Development Director. 

Alan Christy:  ”Off the top of my head the big ones are some agreements with the Sheriff’s Department, the Elmore County Medical Center, Elmore County Ambulance, an agreement with the Ada County Highway District.  This site will utilize roads in Ada County.”

Christy has worked on other planned communities at a private firm in Bellevue, Washington.  He says, in his experience, the Treasure Valley lacks a couple of factors to support a development the size of Mayfield. 

Alan Christy:  ”Washington has a much higher population base.  There’s also mega-employers in the Seattle area – Microsoft, Boeing.”

The developer of Mayfield Townsite and his representative declined to comment for this story.  But John Starr of Colliers International knows a thing or two about commercial real estate.  He believes there may be demand for housing east of Boise.  Starr supports the Mayfield Townsite. He testified in front of Elmore County’s Planning and Zoning Commission earlier this year.

John Starr:  ”What I’m saying is that it’s not just a matter that growth is good, but that planning for growth is good, being ahead of the curve, knowing what you’re going to do next and gathering the resources together to get it done.”

Starr cites a study adopted last year by the Community Planning Association of Southern Idaho that predicts nearly 1.2 million people in the Treasure Valley by 2035.  That’s roughly twice the current population of Ada, Canyon, and Elmore Counties combined. 

John Starr:  ”When you look at the fourteen thousand houses that are proposed for a place like Mayfield, you discover real quickly that it’s actually just a small percentage of the overall requirement.”

Starr says if growth projections are right, then the Treasure Valley needs communities like Mayfield to house all those people.  But developments like Mayfield can be a tough pill to swallow. He tells one story about being at a planning and zoning meeting where Boy Scouts lead the Pledge of Allegiance.  Starr says an angry local cornered him afterwards.  

John Starr:  ”He asked me one time, ‘Why in the hell are you doing this?  Why are you guys building these subdivisions?’  And I pointed at those Boy Scouts and I said that’s why, so that they can have a future here.”

It may take as long as five years before ground breaks at the Mayfield Townsite according to Planning Director Christy.   Meanwhile, he says, another developer has plans for a commercial and residential project called Mayfield Springs.  This Mayfield would be much smaller and closer to I-84 than the thousands of homes slated for the Mayfield Townsite. But this development would also be built near where elk now roam.  And that’s something residents like Lori Atkins hope won’t happen any time soon.

Copyright 2011 Boise State Public Radio

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