6-hour meeting expected for Eagle City Council’s Avimor decision. Here’s what could happen

The fight over the future of the city-sized Avimor development will soon come before Eagle’s elected leaders.

The Eagle City Council will decide whether to uphold the Planning and Zoning Commission’s recommendation to deny Avimor’s request to become part of the city of Eagle, or throw out the recommendation and approve Avimor’s request.

In January, the commission spent two public meetings, nine hours in all, listening to debate about annexing the nearly 8,800-home development in the Eagle Foothills. The four commissioners combed through 2,000 pages of development application materials and ultimately decided there were too many unknown economic consequences and resident worries about water, traffic and growth.

The City Council plans to hold a public hearing on Avimor’s proposal at 6 p.m. Monday, March 13, at City Hall. Jason Pierce, Eagle’s mayor, told the Idaho Statesman that he can’t predict the size of the crowd but is planning for a full council chamber, with overflow space in City Hall’s community room.

“(The council) has as much time as they need to feel they can make a decision on the application,” Pierce said by phone. “Planning and Zoning went two meetings with Avimor. Ours could go one, it could go two, it could go four, until the council feels comfortable with the information they’ve gotten and can make a good decision one way or the other for the community.”

Avimor today consists of 700 single-family homes, and the developer plans to add 300 homes per year on average, said Deborah Nelson, land use attorney for Givens Pursley, who represented Avimor in the Planning and Zoning hearings.

With 8,800 homes, Avimor would have an estimated 22,500 residents, nearly as large as Kuna’s and nearly twice as large as Star’s today. Eagle’s population now tops 32,000.

Avimor executives want to annex into Eagle because the development would span three counties at full capacity and would have to go through three sets of county commissioners when it wants to build. The developer, Avimor Development, would rather have one entity, the city, in charge of building applications.

The Ada County Commission approved Avimor’s development nearly two decades ago. Since then, the county has tightened restrictions around planned communities to the point where they are nearly impossible to build, the Idaho Statesman previously reported. The county allows far sparser development than Avimor’s owners want, another reason why Avimor is counting on annexation.

The City Council does not have to take the planning commissioners’ advice. Reversals of Planning and Zoning Commission decisions re not unusual in the Treasure Valley. In April 2022, the Boise City Council rejected Boise’s Planning and Zoning Commission recommendation and allowed Interfaith Sanctuary to move its homeless shelter to a former Salvation Army building on State Street.

Pierce said he tentatively plans to end the first meeting shortly after midnight and schedule a second meeting if one is needed. That’s later than some Treasure Valley boards and councils prefer to meet on weeknights.

“It’s a Catch-22,” Pierce said. “For some people (midnight) is too late, but then, in my opinion, people took the night away from their family, and it doesn’t really matter if it goes till 10 or midnight. If you make it a second day, then they gotta come back another day that takes away from their family.”

The Planning and Zoning Commission ended its Avimor meetings shortly after 10 p.m.

Pierce said he couldn’t legally say more about Avimor’s application. But some residents opposed to Avimor’s annexation have accused the city of having a bias toward annexation. During the 2019 mayoral election, Pierce and a City Council member received campaign donations from the McLeod family, which owns the property, and from Avimor Development.

More details about the hearing can be found on Eagle’s website: www.cityofeagle.org/calendar.aspx?EID=4071

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