We are looking to move north of Colorado in three years because let’s be honest, Denver & the Front Range traffic and house prices is turning this area into a mini Los Angeles. I am thinking of Boise/Nampa with it’s less than 2% growth rate and it is a large enough to have jobs and they have raw land nearby.
So what can anyone share good or bad about living in Boise?
I’m west of Denver about 100 miles, and I hear ya. I get down to Denver about every three weeks, and it appears to have 24/7 rush hour. My mothers little 1000sq foot single story no basement 1 car garage house is worth about $500,000.
YMMV, but I wouldn’t want to move further north for the sole reason of even less daylight in winter…
You mean besides the fact that Boise is boring as all get-out compared to Denver??
In other commentary: is this really GQ? I mean, are you asking about something specific about Boise? Or should this be in MPSIMS or IMHO or some such place?
Since the OP is asking for opinions, let’s move it to that forum.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
45 minutes north and you’re in the mountains, do you like to ski? We have a ski resort just outside town,
Do you like the desert, sage and bitter brush? Drive south for about 45 minutes and you’re in it.
You can camp and fish less than an hour from town, but it’s down in a canyon, so it feels like you’re a lot further out than you are.
How about rock climbing? There are lots of rock climbing opportunities in the area.
Do you like to ride a bicycle? We have miles and miles of trails and paths that connect the foothills to the greenbelt that runs along the river. It’s called the Ridges to River Complex. The trailhead for the entire system is something like 10 or 15 miles outside of town, and the greenbelt part of it now runs from the extreme east end of Boise clear out to just past Eagle, with plans to extend as far as Nampa or Caldwell.
How do you feel about commuting, in light traffic it takes 15 to 45 minutes to get anywhere depending on where you are and are going. We’re a bit spread out here.
In short if you’re the outdoorsy type, you should like it here ok.
If you’re not, mmm, well, there’s the “bar district” downtown. We have a music festival called “Treefort”. Basically they close off part of downtown for it. I hear that it’s starting to become a nationally known event.
What are your politics? While Boise is quite liberal compared to the rest of Idaho, it’s still Idaho so my definition of liberal may not match your’s. Nampa and the rest of the surrounding area are more conservative.
What kind of work do you do or do you want/expect to do here?
Housing market, I just recently packed and moved a retired neurosurgeon to Thailand with his Thai wife. He was asking around $300,000 for a 2 story 4bdroom house (2nd floor was a bonus room). That’s probably pretty representative of the local housing market. They’re building apartments and filling them as fast as they can, and I don’t think there’s a lot of inventory for single family homes available right now. Not too sure about that though, so double check that.
Thats about all I can think of off the cuff, some is more or less accurate, do your homework of course.
Idaho is one of the fastest growing states in the country. We attract two main types right now. Retirees, looking at the low cost of living, and conservatives, fleeing California.
That is a gross simplification, but at least fairly accurate.
It is a very conservative state, Raul Labrador, a member of the America hating “Freedom Caucus” is running for governor and will likely win. There are all types here, but the number of conservatives means that you will likely be represented by a closeted, gay-bashing, climate change denying, idiot. You get used to it.
The link leads to the usual stupidity in the state government where one rebel flag loving (female) legislator, tries to shut down a routine bill because of reasons too ridiculous to write about.
The mountains in Colorado are far superior to ours. The hunting and fishing here are great. Boise is growing far faster than >2%, I believe. Try and buy now if that is your plan.
You really need to know about Meridian. A suburb of Boise that is eating everything around it.
From Wikipedia:
“A 2015 estimate placed the population at approximately 90,739. Meridian is the state’s fastest-growing city, with an 81.5 percent increase in population since 2000.”
That is an astonishing growth rate. At least it has slowed down since the 90s when it grew 264% in ten years. Base on the estimates and time elapsed it’s passed Nampa now and is the state’s second largest city.
But it’s basically a rapidly growing, sprawling suburb.
[Pink Flamingos]
“Let’s move to Boise, I always wanted to go there!”
“Boise, Cotton? Why, that might not be a bad place!”
[/Pink Flamingos]
If it’s good enough for Babs and Cotton …
So, I’m working on a musical titled “Idaho!” (apologies to “Oklahoma!”). It’s about a city boy who starts an online romance with a gal in Idaho, and is struggling with the decision.
It’s just a start, but it’s something:
Why would one go to Idaho?
Is it the snow?
I’m ambivalent, you know?
Does it show?
Why would one go to Idaho?
Potatoes and trees
It does have these
The politics, though…
I just don’t know…
Why would one go to Idaho?
I was originally thinking of GQ sort of answers like how the schools are, jobs available, house prices, etc. but DSYoungEsq is right so thank you for moving it so there can be a richer discussion.
I grew up outside of Twin Falls, so trips to Boise were high adventure in the big city.
It’s been a while since I lived there, but my analysis was that there were more $30,000 vehicles for sale in the newspaper than $30,000/year jobs.
Yes, there is raw land all around, but it is all Forest Service or BLM (Bureau of Land Management). Access/use of federal land tends to change from administration to administration.
Skiing is available, but it’s getting to the point where locals can’t afford to do it. There are the big slopes and resorts, but you can find smaller and cheaper options.
The LDS Church has a big influence. I tend to think of Mormons as being like manure - if you pile them up, they can really stink. If you spread them thin, they can do a lot of good. That being said, Boise is western Idaho, so you won’t have the same set of issues as you might in eastern Idaho - that’s just an extension of northern Utah.
Major employers include the state government, Micron, HP, Albertson’s (truck backhaul company with a grocery store chain attached), Simplot, Boise Cascade. I graduated from Idaho State, not Boise State, so getting interviews in Boise was rough and rare.
You’ll need a dependable vehicle and you’ll be putting a lot of miles on it. Climate is pretty mild - summer heat is dry, winter cold is dry. You’d technically be in a desert - 12 inches per year average rainfall or so. I remember having entire calendar months with no precipitation whatsoever.
Sounds like Boise hasn’t changed all that much from when I lived there 40 years ago. Merkin made many of the same points I would have made had my data not been so ancient. We called Boise “Blasé, Land of the Bland.” I’ve never lived in a more closed-minded place and that’s saying something, because I’ve also lived in Utah and Montana. I’ve never disliked living anywhere more than Boise.
The LDS Church does have a big influence in Boise also, or at least it used to. Don’t know if Morrison-Knudsen still has their headquarters there, but they are another big employer I would add to Merkin’s list.
It can be pretty,yes, but also very dry and hot in summer. Fun to float the river if locals still do that. There is/was a decent Basque influence on their cuisine back in the day. That was good.
In my view, the best thing to come out of Boise was I-84 heading west. But I’m sure things have changed some since then.
Good luck with your decision.
If you’re like me and never try to partake in culture or leave your apartment, then Boise’s not bad. It’s a decent place to work for the tech sector without dealing with a coastal cost of living. The weather is relatively mild, relative to the rest of Idaho at least. If you’re a liberal your opinion, and vote, are worthless.
Yep, forgot to mention floating the river, if you like sitting in very cold water for half a day:D
Morrison-Knudsen doesn’t exist anymore, and the company that bought out the remnant of them has or will soon be moving the remaining operations elsewhere.
Boise Cascade sold off their forestry division and is just Boise now, focused on office products. In fact i’m not even sure if Boise (the company fka Boise-Cascade) even still exists. The Boise-Cascade building is now “Something I can’t remember” Plaza. Its an office building hosting several different companies.
The Basque “Quarter” (I don’t know what else to call it) down town is still there and thriving. The Basque are still a large and subtle influence on the town.
We also have a large, for our size, and growing immigrant/refugee population.
There’s a mosque in town now. Not sure if you knew about that, Aspenglow, but it’s been around for about 10ish years.
Have you been back since you lived here that long ago? I barely recognized it after living elsewhere for just 8 years. There is a thriving LGBT subculture. At least it looks that way from my perspective, but I’m not a part of it.
There is a small, hardcore liberal faction in Boise, it’s not true that your opinion and vote won’t count if you’re a liberal. It might seem that way for presidential elections, but for local, and congressional elections, that’s just not true.
Honestly, we need more liberals to move to Idaho. To balance it out and maybe break the conservative lock on the state.
Heh, I see more ISU graduates running things in Boise these days than I do BSU graduates. Those ISU folks, man, they network with each other HARD
Missed the edit window. Schools, I take it you have kids? can you afford private schools, if so do you object to them being catholic or protestant based? The better schools are for the most part the private schools, which are mostly either catholic or protestant based schools. We have a few others. There is an international school here, I haven’t heard much good about it. ANSER has a school here, but I’ve heard that its slid quite a bit in quality since my nieces went there. The public schools in the area, some are better, some are worse. I’d be sending my kid to a different school if I could get the school to agree to accept him and afford the tuition.
I did not know about the mosque, guestchaz, but I am pleased to hear it’s there. Boise can definitely benefit from exposure to more diversity of every kind!
I have not been back, having assiduously avoided the place since my departure despite Nampa being my birthplace. Left at age 6 months, moved back to the area in my late teens/early 20s for a few years. I’m sure it would seem like an entirely different town, now.
Interestingly, there was always a thriving LGBT subculture there. I knew quite a number of gay folks and often hung out with them at their clubs. There was also a vibrant disco culture, for those that remember that. Both the gay and disco clubs were a blast back in the day. Glad to hear it has survived. (The LGBT subculture, not the disco.)
Good luck with that. Truly, I hope it happens. The Idahoan influence on the eastern half of my state is always a bit of a worry.
Icarus… your ditty is a delight. 
Disco, yeah, I remember that.
The Torch Café (Home of the Finger Steak) is now the Torch Café “titty bar” (We still have the Best Finger Steaks) and there are two of them. They regularly have, well I don’t really know what they call them off hand, “let your freak-flag fly nights” I guess. Lines out the door on those nights. I would go if for no other reason than to just see, but I hate lines. Far as the LGBT scene, it’s more out in the open these days, than it has been in the past. The Emerald Club is gone though. There was some acrimonious comments floating about for a while just before it closed about straights taking it over, after they made Thursday “Straight Night”.