Words like “visionary” and “renaissance” are being used to describe the shift that is turning Garden City’s neglected corners into a model of urban renewal. Crime is down, rents are up, the cultural sector is igniting, and people in and around the area are excited about the future.The buzz started in 2005 when the city scrapped its comprehensive plan and invited the entire community to the rewrite. The resulting 49-page document won a Grow Smart Award from Idaho Smart Growth last year, not only for its inclusive process, but also for its innovative use of existing space and resources.An industrial stretch on Adams Street is slated to become a vibrant corridor like Boise’s Hyde Park. New zoning allows a Live-Work-Create district in the city’s Old Town that will have artists both living and working in affordable lofts. Design standards have been set that encourage attractive, integrated spaces in the commercial sector. The mixed-use Waterfront District development is going up between 37th and 35th streets. Bright buildings and bulldozers dominate the view from the south side of the Greenbelt, which will soon connect all the way to Eagle. The dream is grand, and some of it already has been realized, but how possible is the extreme transformation of a city with such a dark past? Can a place once known for gambling houses and shanty towns become, as it is sometimes called, “the heart of the Treasure Valley”? Will State Street grow into a tree-lined mall? Can the fairgrounds turn into a downtown core with its own skyline? Will boutiques, restaurants and neighborhood groceries pop up between used car lots, warehouses and bars?Garden City’s comprehensive plan boasts a “new vision for the future,” but most of the thousands of people who drive through the city every day are kicking back, waiting to see what happens.Meanwhile, a handful of individuals are carving out that vision. From business owners to artists to elected officials, these people are making the difference between a nice dream and a satisfying reality. All have hopes for the future, but in the 4.2 square miles on either side of Chinden, they are beautifying the present.We’d like you to meet some of these people. THE OTHER GARDEN CITYGarden City was named for the Chinese gardens that once thrived in the floodplains of the Boise River, but most of the gardens were gone before Donna Conn moved to 36th Street.The spirited 79-year-old’s mobile home and metal detector business, Conn’s Wampum Hut, look as though they’ve grown roots, a fitting metaphor for her connection to the place she’s called home for more than 50 years. Conn is a polio survivor, a mother, a journalist, an entrepreneur, a former dance band leader and Garden City’s unofficial historian. Over the years, she has involved herself in countless public hearings and community happenings, shaping the city just by speaking up, or as she jokes, “creating problems.” She was on the steering committee that helped draft Garden City’s new comprehensive plan and hopes it will combat a generation of stereotypes that would have outsiders believe everyone in the city has a bag of drugs in one hand and a gun in the other.”We came here in the mid-’50s, right before gambling was outlawed. We didn’t experience it, but we experienced the aftermath,” Conn said. “Everybody we talked to said, ‘Oh, you don’t want to move there.’ They had theories that there were red lights behind every bush, slot machines to lead you to iniquity. But once you got off the main strip, it was different.”The bad influences have changed, but the reputation lingers. Garden City has the highest density of registered sex offenders in Ada County (currently 54 of about 12,500 residents), and though the crime rate dropped almost 10 percent from 2005 to 2006 and more than 20 percent the year before, it is still relatively high for such a small city, as are poverty statistics. A 1999 census showed that 12.7 percent of the population was below the poverty line. The city is gearing up for another census in 2008, but City Clerk Pam Thomason said poverty numbers will probably be similar.”It’s going to change,” she added, “because the revitalization is starting to happen.” Conn is part of that revitalization, bolstered by memories of better times. Ron “Pinky” Lester had a skating rink just down the street, there were prize fights and movies in Centennial Park, and the now-defunct Garden City Gazette kept the community connected. With that community in mind, Conn plans to build a meditation garden in the old park and publish her own Garden City Bulletin, to celebrate “the good things.” “As the world updates and changes, Garden City is changing for the better along with it,” she said.CHANGE FROM THE BOTTOM UPIn a letter posted on Garden City’s official Web site, Mayor John Evans wrote: “Our city is, in many ways, undergoing a renaissance. We are rapidly moving from being just a small town surrounded by Boise and Eagle to being an attractive, vibrant and enviable city in the heart of the Treasure Valley.” Evans has witnessed that movement from many angles over many years. He was introduced to Garden City in the ’80s as a developer with Evans Brothers Construction. The three brothers took over an existing project on the west end of town and created the high-end subdivision, Riverside Village. Evans and his family moved to the area in 1988. Four years later, then-mayor Jay Davis asked him to serve on the planning and zoning commission. He joined the City Council in 1995, where he stayed until running for mayor in 2005. He took office in January 2006, amid a huge transition. “You kind of get vested in the community, living and working here. If you can effect some change, it kind of gets in your system,” Evans said. “What’s fun here is this change is being driven from the bottom up. These are not edicts coming down from the City Council. The steering committee is made up of people who live and work here.”IF YOU BUILD ITFour years ago, metal sculptor Irene Deely did something crazy. On a block of Chinden Boulevard occupied by High Desert Harley-Davidson and the old Ranch Club, she transformed a Chinese restaurant into a contemporary art gallery. She called it Woman of Steel, and as the name suggests, she stood on her own.”I’m learning that a lot of successful entrepreneurs don’t listen to the logic of something. They go with their hearts,” Deely said. “It became an installation piece for me to bring beauty into this place.”She called Garden City “the Left Bank of Boise” and compared its self-governing ways and myriad contrasts to the old West. She has brought some color to the commercial landscape of Chinden, from original works in her whimsical gallery to the striking aesthetic of its exterior to community events like the Chinese Dragon Parade, which Deely organized in September to celebrate the city’s past.”The encouragement it brought to people was amazing,” Deely said. “Some were crying because the police had finally come into this neighborhood not for a drug bust, but to throw candy to children and be part of something positive.”One thing she celebrated that day was the new Live-Work-Create district, which she helped design. Deely plans to build affordable lofts for artists behind her gallery, no matter what happens to the property value.”It’s definitely a huge risk, and I recognize that,” she said, “but it’s one that’s worth fighting for because of the human impact.”A LITTLE HELP FROM THE UNIVERSESam Stimpert and Anneliessa Balk Stimpert took a similar risk this year when they decided to pull Visual Arts Collective out of Boise’s Linen District straight into limbo. They opened the alternative gallery two years ago to promote all forms of art, from classic theater to independent film to body manipulation. But they couldn’t grow enough while renting in Boise, so they decided to buy in Garden City. The plan was to team up with Steve Fulton and Pat Storey of Audio Lab recording studios to create a progressive, multiuse arts facility in a community on the rise.”We loved the idea of coming to an area where the city was actively participating in urban renewal,” Balk Stimpert said. “Being first is so much more exciting because you have a chance to shape a place and make things happen.”Fulton helped the Stimperts find an old warehouse behind Woman of Steel, but the price tag left them stranded. On an impulse, Balk Stimpert wandered into the gallery and ended up telling Deely about her dream. Even though they barely knew each other, something clicked.Deely and her husband, Bob, ended up buying the warehouse behind their gallery with the understanding that the Stimperts would eventually pay it off. They got the keys in September, but serendipitous paths aren’t always the smoothest.Fulton was able to get a small-business loan of $50,000, but the total cost of remodeling the 9,200-square-foot space will be closer to $200,000. The new facility, which features a gallery, performance stage, recording studio, green room, conference room and lounge was supposed to open in October, but it has yet to crack its doors to the public. One financial surprise after another keeps getting in the way, but solutions continue to present themselves.”I have no doubt in my mind,” Fulton said. “I don’t even have a thread of doubt in my body that it will happen.”"Absolutely it will happen,” Balk Stimpert echoed. “We’ve had such incredible support, emotionally, mentally. It’s something the community really wants, and the support has fed us. I believe that the universe is on our side.” MIRACLE ON 35TH STREETWhile most of America weeps over the current healthcare crisis, people with no insurance, no jobs and no hope are getting free care at the Garden City Community Clinic.It grew from the vision of a local doctor named Karl Watts who wanted to provide medical care to needy people in foreign countries. When he realized how great the need was at home, he turned his attention to the federally designated “medically underserved” community of Garden City.Called Genesis World Mission, Watts’ nonprofit organization finds ways to give people from Kenya to Nampa vital care they often can’t afford. Steven Reames is executive director of the 5-year-old Garden City clinic, which used to be a doublewide trailer operating one day a week in a parking lot. Now it’s a polished primary care facility on 35th Street with the means to treat everything from diabetes to tooth decay. Low-income patients come from as far away as Mountain Home and Canyon County and are served by volunteer doctors, nurses, physician’s assistants, nurse practitioners and dentists who donated $100,000 last year in hours for medical services alone. That doesn’t include supplies, pharmaceuticals and administrative support, even if it’s as simple as finding a stamp for someone who needs it.Reames insisted there is no typical patient, that affluent people down on their luck share the waiting room with single moms, ex-cons and immigrants.”We’re a place to help people get back on their feet and put some dreams into the ground,” he said. “When they walk in here and see that this is a nice place, all of a sudden their human dignity rises up and they say, ‘Hey, I’m a person.’”And the community pitches in. Handwritten blessings line the studs in what will soon be a dental wing, and goody bags form the recently re-formed Garden City Chamber of Commerce are ready for patients who could use, as Reames says, “a little extra love.”"Even increasing people’s hope for the future - that’s a big thing,” he said. “Everybody is responsible for their corner of the world. There are a lot of corners in Garden City, and we want to make sure our corner is beautiful.”Erin Ryan: 672-6734
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