In an Idaho Statesman report this past May, Steven Hillgren, partner at High Rhodes Investment Group, said: "If we do 75,000 square feet, this place will be absolutely humming, and we'd be thrilled."
The 75,000-square-foot figure was a target, not a finalized size. Harris Ranch broke ground more than two decades ago, and the town center site along Warm Springs Avenue has remained mostly undeveloped as its plans have changed over time.
The plan changed again this year. The current version is smaller and more food-focused than what residents saw two years ago, and it includes a projected construction timeline.
Two Decades of Renderings
Harris Ranch is not a new idea. The 1,300-acre master-planned community in Boise's Barber Valley was built around Smart Growth and New Urbanism principles from the start, according to the City of Boise's own Harris Ranch community infrastructure district page, with a mix of housing, trails, and eventually a commercial core meant to give the neighborhood a walkable center of its own. The town center has been a later part of that vision to take shape.
In 2024, the city let the developers eliminate a six-acre "village green" that had anchored earlier concepts, replacing it with a series of smaller, distributed open spaces that add up to the same acreage on paper but do not read as one central gathering lawn. The stated logic, per BoiseDev's June reporting, was that Harris Ranch already has Marianne Williams Park nearby, with Alta Harris Park coming, so the town center itself did not need to duplicate that function. Fair enough. But it also meant the single big civic space residents had pictured for years quietly disappeared from the plan before most people noticed.
Changes in the 2026 Plan
The 2026 revision also changes the layout. The mix of commercial and housing has shifted south on the site, and a chunk of land once earmarked for retail is now planned as townhomes instead. Here is the pattern across three versions of this plan, in plain terms:
- Earlier concept: a six-acre village green as the visual and social center, commercial ringing the promenade.
- 2024 revision: the green eliminated, replaced by smaller pocket plazas that add up to the same acreage on paper.
- 2026 revision: the commercial and residential mix pushed further south on the parcel, with land once slated for shops now planned as townhomes. In the current plan, about five of the site's six acres are open to the public, including retail frontage, but that public space is distributed rather than concentrated in one green.
Those layout changes set the context for the commercial strategy now taking shape.
The Commercial Plan
The developers have also discussed the commercial space's economics. In its June report, BoiseDev quoted Brad Hillgren, also a partner at High Rhodes Investment Group, on the commercial space's economic drivers: "A key driver of the commercial success is our ability to attract a specialty market. We're working to make that happen." He went further: "The ultimate economic driver of the commercial is going to be the multi-family above, and that's going to need to be successful. Those two things are kind of the economic fuel."
BoiseDev's June report describes a small specialty grocery anchoring the project near the existing Albertsons a short drive away. Hillgren told BoiseDev that developers have had "lots and lots of interest" from restaurant operators and are confident those spaces will lease quickly, with a deliberate mix of price points and menu styles rather than one dominant concept.
As reported by BoiseDev in June: "We really need to create a unique place that is a worthy place that people will say, 'let's go out to the town center.'"
A hotel is also part of the plan now, sited along the southern edge near Warm Springs Avenue. Hillgren described negotiations with an operator that runs more than 25 similarly sized hotels across the West, a brand new to the Boise market. Nothing is signed publicly yet, but it is the first time a specific hospitality use has attached itself to this project rather than staying a placeholder box on a site plan.
Projected Construction Timeline
As of this spring, crews had begun grading the northern block of the site, with work on the rest of the property slated for this summer. Equipment along Warm Springs Avenue is consistent with the schedule the developers laid out.
The Idaho Statesman reported in mid-May that Steven Hillgren hopes to start construction around this time next year, putting the likely groundbreaking for vertical construction around spring 2027. From there, once site preparation wraps, he expects the build itself to take about 18 months, which puts a realistic opening somewhere in late 2028 or early 2029. The schedule offers a projected opening window rather than a firm date.
What You Do Not Have to Wait For
None of this means Barber Valley has been waiting around empty-handed. Cross the Boise River into Bown Crossing and the restaurant row that has built up over the past several years already gives the area a real center of gravity: Tavern at Bown Crossing for the sit-down dinner crowd, Nara Ramen & Izakaya in the former Locavore space, Barrio for tacos and margaritas, Ti Amo, and Lovejoy's Real Ice Cream in Bown Crossing's final retail building, which last year also picked up a dentist's office and an H&R Block to fill out its remaining space.
And if you are reading this in August, you still have a few weeks left of one of the neighborhood's better free amenities. The 2026 float season on the Boise River officially opened June 20 once Ada County Parks and Waterways, Boise Parks and Recreation, and Boise Fire confirmed conditions were safe, and it runs through Labor Day weekend. Barber Park, the launch point for that six-mile float down to Ann Morrison Park, sits inside Barber Valley itself, a few minutes from the town center site.
The town center, when it arrives, will add to that existing rhythm rather than create one from scratch. That is probably the most useful way to think about it: not as the thing that finally makes Harris Ranch feel like a neighborhood, but as the next layer on top of a neighborhood that has already been building its own identity while the site plans kept changing around it.
If you want to track the project as it firms up, the Barber Valley Neighborhood Association keeps a running record of zoning amendments and meeting notes tied to the Harris Ranch specific plan, which is the closest thing to a real-time feed on what is actually being approved versus what is still a rendering.
Whether you are watching this project because you live two blocks from it or because you are weighing what it might mean for a future move to Southeast Boise, it helps to have someone who follows these changes as they happen rather than after the ribbon cutting. If you have questions about what any of this means for your corner of Barber Valley or the Treasure Valley more broadly, Glenda Phua is happy to talk it through. Let's Connect.
