Local Discussion. Read by thousands every month! Idaho Falls, Ammon, and East Idaho
This article is to generate ideas and discussion about Idaho Falls‘ future.
I think all suggestions are valid, from urban planning to city laws to businesses to parks to technology to education to even scenery.
This is meant to be a local brainstorm. No ideas are bad in this discussion thread. Dream away.
It would be nice to see some things wanted to remain the same, in addition to new or changed things.
So what do you want to see 10 years from now in Idaho Falls?
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Gato got runned over by Marcus many moons ago. Be ye daft, 2486? 
be keepin yer lucky charms to yerself laddie! 8o 
Let's have a new poll, alright, Joe?
It WAS all he had to say about it! 
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{ 46 comments… read them below or add one }
A new ice rink, some better independant local restaurants, expanded greenbelt and a revitalized downtown.
I see a prosperous and revitalized downtown, with a dozen or so nice restaurants lining the streets. I believe the area south of Pancheri will be developed with a lot or retail space and tourism will see much growth. Also, I see a new rec center and convention center in Idaho Falls.
I hope to see a new pancheri overpass, kids are walking and riding bikes in the snow on that tiny 2-lane pancheri bridge, if a car dies on the bridge it’s a real hazard to pass.
I hope to see more public sculptures, more residential spaces mixed with commercial spaces, an ampitheater carved into a foothill (or at blacktail reservoir) for summer concerts, and tall buildings at least 15 stories tall to create a skyline.
How about a bookstore downtown… complete with local poetry readings, musicians, book club reviews, and friendly academic discussions…
comfy couches to relax and visit about our lovely city… and dream about what we want to see in another 10 years…
I would like to see:
1- the old fred meyer building knocked down, and something useful built in its place. (like upscale residential with some commercial)
2- a revitalized downtown, with updated (or restored) storefronts, a couple of tall office buildings, and PARKING (the main reason I don’t spend more time downtown)
3- definitely a redone Pancheri overpass, perhaps even with freeway access at that intersection
4- more roundabouts (just kidding, I hate those things…)
More roundabouts (I am not kidding, I love those things, but the lanes could be roomier).
A full-sized medical facility / campus on the westside of town, possibly with close interstate access.
A real downtown! Not just a bunch of small decrepid buildings with vacancies. A pedestrian paradise with certain streets closed off to vehicle traffic. Shops, offices, and resedential structures which will make downtown more stable. Perhaps even 2 or 3 10+ story buildings.
I would love to see the makings of an intercity mass transit system with more than just a bus route that only connects IF and Ammon.
How about improving the roads and I’m not just talking about patching up the potholes. The city needs to work on a few places such as the Pancheri Overpass and creating more east-west “arterials”.
How about installing a few satellite libraries so that anyone can drive or walk a few blocks instead of the full distance downtown.
Expand the greenbelt, park system and I like Joes idea of an outdoor ampitheater in the foothills.
And last but not least I do believe in ten years time that the ISU campus in IF will be rivaling that of the Poky campus, so a big investment in education is defenitaly needed.
I too would love to have a bookstore downtown where I could sip coffee and relax. We just need a great idea on how to attract people to downtown which in-turn would attract mom/pop businesses downtown. I would also like to see the abandoned box stores made into something better.
I agree with the majority…fix up downtown. It’s so run down and it’s a real shame for being so close to a greenbelt that looks so nice. I also think improving the landscaping would make this city much more appealing. Clean up the sidewalks and fix up the old vacant buildings so their more appealing for when someone wants to lease them. Also, the roads in this town are terrible, they need to repave them instead of just throwing some tar down and spreading gravel over it. I’ve never seen so many cracked windshields in one town in my life!
A famous architect Moshe Safdie http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moshe_Safdie has some crazy ideas about future urban cars, but he did write a great idea in his book The City After the Automobile: An Architect’s Vision
The idea was to erect retractable canvas awnings along street buildings, so that when the awnings go down, they meet in the middle of the street. When raised, they go back against the buildings they are erected in front of. The idea is to drop the cover when it’s bad weather (hot or cold).
I realized Safdie’s idea really was to create what is normally called a “mall” from a downtown area.
I don’t know how it would be engineered, but such a system would be pretty neat to see in our downtown. Of course it would have to be planned for winter snow and winds. It would have to essentially seal in a several-block area of downtown. Ok now I’m really dreaming.
The book provided a sketch that made more sense than I probably do.
Palm Trees and swimming pools!
Oh, that’s just the winter blues talking.
I like the direction Idaho Falls is going, though I would like to see more locally-owned independent businesses. You only need so many cookie-cutter restaurants, y’know?
A Green Day concert. I know the local arts guild tries their hardest to get musical acts in here, and they have to build up to the bigger names, but a Green Day concert would be awesome and very popular.
Joe have you any idea how much it would cost to bring in that group, not to mention the waiting list, and the list for waiting to get on the waiting list?
But if your gonna dream, dream BIG!
I have no idea, no inkling, no clue (about a lot of things, including bringing Green Day in).
I’ll dream big in my blissful ignorance. 8^)
Cheers to the Blissful Ignorance!
So I was visiting with a co-worker and he mentioned a few rock groups coming to Blackfoot, Three Days Grace, and Buckcherry… purely gossip around the water cooler of course…
has anyone heard of these groups coming… or anything related… and why oh why Blackfoot…?
I’ve never encountered any “waiting lists” when booking bands … and I’ve been doing so for 7 years now.
Joe, a Green Day concert, while their new album wasn’t my cup o’ tea, would be big for our area. Perhaps the Arts Council is not the ideal venue to go about getting them here, though. I’ve noticed that their concepts of a vibrant music scene are pretty much outdated and cater pretty exclusively to the over-40 crowd. The best way to get a “big deal” band into Idaho Falls would be to hire a production company and a promoter to organize the event – yes, that would cost lots of money. A band like Green Day usually has their booking company listed on their website, and if you can get in touch with their representative there, you can get on the fast-track to booking them. I’d give it a 12-month turnover period, tops.
Edit: Yeah, 3 Days Grace and Buckcherry are playing Blackfoot. Blackfoot has a great rock venue now, the name of which escapes me.
Edit of my Edit: It is at the El Rey Events Center and is being put on by VSP Sound, a mobile DJ company based in SE Idaho. The show is sold out and is part of the current Concert Series by the same company.
the “waiting list” is just a figure of speech meant to illustrate the complex issues of bringing in such a band…
I shall inform my co-worker that despite his anxious anticipation for the 3 Days Grace and Buckcherry appearance he will need to purchase a CD instead…
May I ask JeremyPlo what you do that requires you to book shows?
I am just curious…
Within the next ten years, I’d like to see an amusement park in Idaho Falls. It would be neat to see a roller coaster going down the foothill.
For something preserved, I hope the world war II-era amusement rides at Tautphaus park are still kept going in 10 years. Yeah, it would be nice if they added a few new ones, but the kids like them, the ferris wheel does give a nice view, and don’t disrespect the Octopus until you ride it.
Green Day concert-ha ha ha ha! I got news for you all they been here, and were run off by no other then IFPD! What did they do well people were mosing aka slam dancing and the cops shut them down for it. This was back in the 90’s when Green Day was just starting out. Oh sure they like to come back to this place, ya sure. Now you say that would not happen now well a few months ago i went to a punk show down town, just down the street from where Green Day played. I took my kids so they could see what the punk scene was and still is like(i am 40). We went over to Saving Center to get some drinks and as we were coming back we cut across the street and one of IFPD not so finest drove by. He told us that if did not us the cross walk next time we get a ticket, he could tell where we were going, to a punk show. This was at night and if you ever been down town at night you know there is no-one around. Yet people cut cross the streets all the time in the day, and yet no cop say a pep. So a Green Day concert i say ya right!
Now what i want in 10 years is a honest cops and city leaders. For the chief of the cops to stop pushing out the good cops out and stop hiring “PUNKS’! Yep in the cop world thats what they are called and they give us real punks a bad name.
Lord knows it take that long!
Guest – Mainly for lack of anyone else doing it. My Senior year of high school, I managed a friend’s band, who I booked at local venues such as billiard halls and the Senior Citizen Center. From there, I began booking touring bands such as Fear Before the March of Flames, Endor (who played the Colonial my Sr. Year), Gatsby’s American Dream, etc. etc.
My point is that booking bands is really very simple, it’s just a matter of putting in the hours and putting up the money to make it happen.
To Lazarus – I agree that the IFPD is not very supportive of local concerts. I was almost arrested at an outdoor concert I arranged. However, at a hardcore show I booked once, I hired off-duty cops and the IFPD stayed away. I guess the moral of the story is that an alternative arts culture cannot exist in Idaho Falls while in opposition to the authorities – so perhaps it should strive to exist in accordance with authority. But then again, that’s not very punk rock, is it?
Something else that would be nice in Idaho Falls are cross-city bike baths.
It is not that pleasant right now to bike on thin sidewalks with traffic puffing exhaust in your face, what with you breathing harder from the biking exertion.
A bike path going around town, and possibly across the middle of town would be nice.
Unfortunately that would probably entail closing an entire street, which is expensive.
But if we are dreaming anyways, imagine taking say a numbered street from south boulevard clear through Woodruff, buying all the homes on the north and south sides of that street, demolishing them all and the road and sidewalks, and replacing it with a wide greenbelt, bike path, playgrounds, ponds, who knows what else.
It would be like a park, but elongated across the city. It would be nice and wide, right in the center of our city. It would be a big deal and a big draw to Idaho Falls.
Yeah, big dreams.
Joe
I used to live in Green Valley NV (a suburb of Las Vegas). One sweet thing they did in that town was create an enlongated park like the one you describe – it was right alongside the wash, so you had a rocky, sandy wash sided by a deserty park-like area.
There was not a ton of grass @ this “park” (for which I was glad – a DESERT doesn’t need too much grass), but there was a bike path, grassy areas, and a whole lot of native wildflowers/cactii/ rocks.
It was WONDERFUL, really. I enjoyed walking it or inline skating it with my dog, I enjoyed bike riding it, I enjoyed meeting up with others and talking about the weather, the world, the local food choices.
I know what you propose is a slightly different idea – but I still think it would be a good one – if only we could do it here. In Green Valley the area was new – so it was built in @ the conception (there isn’t much you can do around washes – designed for two time a year flash floods – so this worked out fantastically).
Speaking of the topic – what I would like to see in Idaho Falls is quite a dream too! I want a TRADER JOE’S.
I also want more diversity – of all kinds, but especially ethnically. I have YET to walk down a street in Idaho and hear a language I don’t understand (and I only understand two – American and Spanish). I think cultural diversity would bring with it – FOOD diversity, music / celebratory diversity, interest / hobby diversity, even more spiritual diversity.
I’d also enjoy it if Idaho Falls had more LIBERALS and PROGRESSIVES – like me! I feel lonely here – nobody shares my passion for the environment, global compassion, and peace.
What else would be good in Idaho Falls? A BIG cultural center – with operas, ballet, music of all types.
These are my dreams for what I’d like to see in Idaho Falls.
Maybe this elongated park would be best along 16th street.
The north side of 17th street is mostly a canal, and many of the homes along 16th are in the lower income bracket. I don’t mean to say bulldoze all the lower income housing, but it would be cheaper to mow those down for an elongate park than perhaps along a pricier numbered street.
Plus, imagine driving along 17th street and seeing a beautiful park along much of the north side? It would become very visible in our city, and would be a big deal.
Yeah, it would be expensive, and a lot of eggs would be cracked to make that cake.
Fuhriman Park has a nice ring to it.
I would like to see no more crooked cops, lawyers and judges. That dream will probably be hardly fulfilled.
I would like to see a system where it has been restored to provide tranquility for all of us in Idaho Falls.
Hey Joe,
I like your thoughts!
Maybe we could add the spiral pedestrian walkways over the busy streets that split the area for the proposed park (holmes, boulevard, etc.)
tek said -
I would like to see no more crooked cops, lawyers and judges.
——————————
It’s doubly hard to expect THAT in the face of Alberto Gonzales’s actions and in Bush’s (incredibly stupid-sounding) response.
If we can’t even have straight-forwardness in our national leaders, how can we expect to have it on a local level? I wish we COULD – but people tend to look TOWARD their larger government as a way to reflect their own behaviors.
I thought of one more thing I’d like to see in Idaho Falls. That food co-op!
I drove along 17th street after suggesting the long park, and realized it would be impossible from Holmes east due to all the commercial developments, starting with the Wal-Green’s.
However, I think the park could still be made from Holmes going west until almost boulevard (up to where the Thorsen Plaza and some small businesses operate along boulevard.
I did a street screenshot and little green overlay to indicate where the park could go. Notice it only goes halfway across some blocks, allowing for some houses to have the park in their backyards.
Keep in mind that there is also a canal going through this area, so it could be routed into a pond or series of waterfalls to enhance the park.
What do you think of this spot? I think it would be nice to drive along 17th street and see this park running alongside for a few blocks.
I don’t know about that Joe.
It’s AWFULLY busy and the traffic goes quite fast through that area. It also smells like exhaust, doesn’t it?
I’d rather see the planners build it into the next phase of some area, maybe on the East side of town where there is no Greenbelt.
Nice graphic though. I wish I had the gift of computer-sense.
Hey Gypsy,
What time of day are you driving on 17th Street? I would love to drive down that street when it’s going fast. Seems like I always get there when everybody is driving 15 MPH!
Inside Observer –
I have NEVER seen it go fast on 17th – it is so slow as to be utterly ridiculous.
What makes things even worse is LAW ENFORCEMENT who every few months or so yammer on about how they are going to go after “aggressive” drivers (have you any idea how many people don’t know the difference between “aggressive” and “assertive”?) – which then scares the sheeple into driving even SLOWER. It’s maddening.
I’ll be on 17th street later today in fact – right @ 5:pm!
You’ll know me by my relative “aggression” (I zip in an out of the two lanes as I can – why not when the drivers around me leave Grand Canyon sized gaps?).
I’ve seen people driving 20 mph UNDER the speed limit IN the left lane – yet THOSE people don’t get tickets for impeding traffic.
It’s crazy.
I’m not a speed demon by any means – I am simply a relatively normal person who has the desire to go the speed our road laws allow.
I think assertive driving is up to 42 mpg on 17th. Any higher than that, or any more than 10 lane changes is aggressive in my POV.
There’s just certain times of day to avoid 17th, like lunch and when people are going to or coming from work, or most of Saturday afternoon.
I could see the proposed park area working alongside the exhaust, if a line or two of evergreens like arborvitae and alberta spruces are planted along the 17th street side. Two tree lines would absorb most of that exhaust, and would make it safer for kids so there is a barrier to keep them from running out into 17th.
You must not be travelling down 17th Street during peak traffic times if you are able to get even close to 42 mph. Usually the flow is more like 30 mph these days if you’re lucky, especially with the Sunnyside detours.
I agree with Gypsy that our local drivers could do much better at “closing the gap” among other things. It would be nice if there was some kind of public education on how to make traffic move more smoothly. It’s very annoying to be stuck driving behind someone who leaves a big gap in front of their car, only to have the approaching traffic signal turn red because the sensor thinks everyone has passed because of how slow this person is going. Most of the time if people would just pay attention to the rest of the traffic around them and not their own little world traffic flow would improve a lot.
I’ve seen on the news lately that our local police department has been doing saturation patrols on 17th Street. They are looking for aggressive drivers, particularly ones who follow too closely. I hope that they aren’t just scaring the locals into leaving even bigger gaps than some of them already do.
A couple of months ago I had the misfortune to get a speeding ticket in one of the morning rush saturation patrols on Woodruff. The thing is, the two cars who were ahead of me went by the police officer much faster than I did. I was the third one through, and the slowest, but I got the ticket. I was just going with the traffic flow, in fact I was slower. Oh well, I was speeding so I guess I deserved it.
I had to go to Traffic School to keep the points off my driving record. Interestingly, the instructor said that 17th Street has more accidents than any other street and talked about how dangerous it is. Then as we went on to talk about other streets in town, it turns out that every other alternative to avoiding 17th Street is treated as a speed trap by the local police. Every single one of them was brought up, 12th Street, St. Clair, 25th Street, John Adams, you name it. If you try to take any alternate route they will be out to get you. It doesn’t seem very driver friendly to me.
Very interesting observations, and thanks for shedding insight what they talk about in those traffic schools.
Since the drivers are getting dinged everywhere, I believe even more so that Idaho Falls could and should develop bike paths.
If more people felt comfortable biking around town there would be less traffic congestion and fewer traffic issues.
That was a beautiful segue Joe, steering back to the original topic of what we would like to see in the future. I would also strongly support any effort to add more bike paths in Idaho Falls. I really believe that a lot more people would ride bikes if they had a safer way to get across town. I know that I would.
Bike paths.
I lived @ the beach for a few years and everybody biked or boarded or inline skated – in other words – more people actively carted their carcasses around by way of non-gas-guzzling vehicle than any other sort of transport.
There is one VERY cool benefit to doing this (beyond the obvious ones like less pollution, exercise, fewer cars in general on the road). The benefit? FRIENDLINESS. People who walk or bike or propel themselves by non-motorized ways seem to be FRIENDLIER. We’ve been discussing how some drivers are poor drivers and how for some of us (including me) this annoys us to the point of frustration.
THIS does not happen when people bike and so forth. If somebody is going slower than you’d like – you can ride right on past them. Perhaps they are enjoying the scenery and don’t WANT to go “with the flow”. Okay – that’s GREAT – no problem!
Bike paths are socially inspiring and I’m all for them. Those who can ride their bikes to work could be encouraged to do this. I live close enough to ride my bike and I sometimes do (though not enough – I often have work errands to run).
I promise you that the VERY things that annoy us car drivers on the roads (those who refuse to close the gap, those who drive ten miles under the speed limit in clear conditions, those who seem to not conceive of traffic around them) are a non-issue on bike paths. Sometimes they are even a pleasant side-bar.
I think we would do well to have more bike paths all over Eastern Idaho. There have been more coming onto the scene – but I vote for more more more. They are good for the community, good for the people who use them.
Oh yes, and be kind and pick up after your dog so you don’t ruin it for the rest of us who have since childhood picked up after ours.
Another thing that encourages more people to ride bikes is more bike racks to lock up the bikes.
They should be right out in front of buildings, clearly visible instead of tucked away in a dark alley.
When people see bike racks, they realize “cool, I can bike down there and take care of my business”
Right now, bikers are locking up to any street sign and pole they can find, and we worry about cops ticketing us for it.
How much does an average bike rack cost? I bet local welders could fab and sell them for reasonable costs to local businesses.
I did not realize there are no bike racks in IF.
That’s quite the lame oversight isn’t it?
Bike racks abound where I come from.
I should get my employer to build some and bring them down to the city hall.
Any idea who we would talk to, Joe?
There was a rumor that Riot Zone was planning to build and expand to be a viable alternative to Utah’s Lagoon. I haven’t heard or seen anything more to that effect, but I sure wish they or someone else would do that.
It would be a nice big draw to have a huge amusement park like that, with roller coasters and water park.
I definitely think we need more bike racks. I went to Hastings last week and ended up locking my bike to their video return box. Yup, about 5 minutes later, “Will the customer who locked their bike to the return box, please report to the cashier’s area?”
They said the manager has a bike rack in some trailer that he’s been meaning to bring in.
Ok. Have him bring it in!!!!
My wife and kids inform me Rigby Lake has been improved with a sand bridge to the island, and more nice sandy beaches on the lake shore and beach shore.
I would like to see some part(s) of our Idaho Falls Snake River shoreline formed into a beach, maybe where a little swimming eddy can be formed also so kids can swim somewhat safely and be protected from the river current.
There is a section like that Joe. I don’t remember the name of the road, but it’s off of Yellowstone. Go south on Yellowstone, past Sunnyside about a mile and a half. On the right hand side you’ll see a cemetary. The road right after that cemetary make a right and take it all the way down until it ends. (about a mile, mile and a half) There’s a little park there with picnic table, a place to launch your boat, and a section roped off for swimming.
I haven’t been there since last summer, so I’m not sure if the swimming area is still sectioned off, but it was pretty nice sized area to swim.
Maybe somebody else knows the name of this little park and what I’m talking about?
Gem Lake Marina? I think GLM is where you describe, and it is a great little Gem (hardee har har har), but I don’t think it has an actual sandy beach does it?
My wife said the Rigby Lake sand was really nice and soft also, not gritty sandpaper river sand.
An iPhone.
The home used to be on the corner of Grandview and Skyline is gone! Completely gone, even the lawn and I think the foundation!
Any word on what will go there? A dedicated right turn would be perfect there, but I imagine another home or business will be put in place.
University Boulevard has at least three new commercial buildings going up, and one had the sign “SCI”, which I thought was the last building on call center row (International)? I wonder if they are expanding or moving? If it is/was SCI in that last International way building, I wonder what will go there?
I used to work for SCI, and the SCI building that is on international way will stay as is. It is used now as a storage for their records pretty much. So I guess you can say they have expanded.