400 homes go back before council, a second Boran opens, and a sunny 78

Yesterday's fog burned off and never came back, and today the valley just keeps climbing — sunny, dry, high near 78, and the only rain anywhere near us this week is going to fall on a mountain two hours away.

Here's your trail: a 55-acre project with a grocery store and up to 400 homes goes back in front of City Council tonight after the planning commission said no to it twice. A new coffee lounge on Overland is cutting its ribbon tomorrow — and it is not the other new Meridian business with almost the same name, which is a sentence we did not expect to write. Two Ada County sheriffs would like a word about the photos you post of your kids. There's a paint night at Rooster's, Potato Days finally has hours attached to it, and the trivia is about what used to stand exactly where City Council will be sitting tonight.

Let's get into it.

Meridian City Hall has stood at 33 E. Broadway Avenue since 2008. For forty years before that, the same patch of ground ran seven days a week making something you can still buy in a grocery store today. What was it? (Answer at the bottom.)

Tuesday, Sept. 15

Wednesday, Sept. 16

Monday, Sept. 21

Worth putting on the calendar now

Thin week on the local calendars, honestly — most of what the Chamber and the community calendar are showing between now and Monday either ran in this newsletter in the last fortnight or turned out to be in Boise when we opened the detail page. One listing this week claimed a Friday football game at "Meridian High School" and was actually Kent-Meridian in Washington State, which is a new one for us.

Tuesday: sunny, dry, high near 78. Overnight low in the mid-40s. Wednesday goes a little further — low 80s — and most valley locations stay dry all week. The next shot at showers or a storm sets up Thursday and Friday, and it's aimed at the central Idaho mountains and higher terrain, not at us.

Two live sources agree on 78 for today. The one source that's specifically a Meridian point forecast says 72 — but that file hasn't refreshed since Sept. 9, so we're not weighting it. Plan for the upper 70s and put the jacket back in the car.

Syringa Crossing is 55 acres spread across the northwest and southwest corners of Meridian Rd./Highway 69 and Amity Rd. — a 63,500-square-foot grocery store, retail and office space, and up to 400 homes. The Planning and Zoning Commission voted unanimously to recommend denial at its Aug. 6 meeting. That was the second no; the commission also denied it in April, after which Hawkins Companies doubled the office space, added 10,000 square feet of retail and cut 33 homes, and council sent it back to the commission for another look.

City staff still aren't there. Associate Planner Sonya Allen said the southwest corner comes in at 72% residential against a 50% cap, and density lands just above 18 homes per acre against a limit of 15. Commissioner Jared Smith said he appreciated the project and still couldn't square it with the comprehensive plan: walk from a house to a shop and you cross traffic to get there. Hawkins' Ethan Mansfield put it more bluntly — "there's this fundamental disconnect between what we want to envision our community as and economic reality, and it bites that those are different." It goes before City Council today, Sept. 15. Read more →

Boran Coffee Lounge is open at 2845 E. Overland Rd. Ste 100, with its grand opening and Chamber ribbon cutting tomorrow from 1 to 2 p.m. Owner Tarra Recla grew up in her family's specialty café in Bellevue, Washington; her mother is Thai, her father Persian, and the menu reads like it — Thai street food, a kebab sandwich, Khaw Mun Gai, Thai tea French toast, alongside Turkish and Vietnamese coffee and a banana coconut latte. "Boran" is her own nickname, given to her by Thai friends for being old-fashioned. "Every cup is a story," she says.

Hours are 6 a.m.–7 p.m. weekdays, 7–7 Saturdays, 7 a.m.–2 p.m. Sundays. One thing worth sorting out before you drive: there is also a Boran Lounge in Meridian — wine and beer, 830 N. Main St. Ste 100, evenings Thursday through Saturday. Two Boran-named rooms, two different addresses, two very different reasons to go. Check which one you meant. Read more →

Ada County Sheriff Matt Clifford and Canyon County Sheriff Kieren Donahue went public over the weekend with a warning aimed squarely at parents: a photo of your child posted online — even on a private account — can be copied, reused and spread, and it carries more information than you think. "A predator can figure out a lot about your child from a picture," Clifford said: what school they go to, what time they go, roughly where you live.

Their advice is unglamorous and practical. Keep up with the apps your kids are actually using. Tell them that if anyone asks for a picture — of anything, however innocent-sounding — they tell you and they don't do it. Watch for behaviour changes. Idaho's Internet Crimes Against Children task force says cyber tips and arrests have roughly quadrupled over five years. The task force's resources are at icacidaho.org. Read more →

Brought to you by Meridian Local Scoop. What's faster than word of mouth? The Meridian Local Business Spotlight! Keeps you up to speed on what's happening around town — and connects local businesses to our community.

A butter plant — the Ada County Dairymen's cooperative creamery. It opened in 1929, at the bottom of the Great Depression, and the city's own history page is blunt about what that meant: the milk checks let member dairymen pay their taxes and feed their families. The product was Challenge Butter, which is still on grocery shelves. The plant ran seven days a week for forty years, expanding while it operated, and at one point Wyeth Laboratories tied in to make SMA baby formula on the same site.

Local processing stopped in 1970 and the milk went to Caldwell instead. The land sat in the middle of downtown until 2008, when the new City Hall was dedicated on it — built without borrowing, after more than twenty years of the city socking money away, and certified LEED Silver. So when council takes up 400 houses on a farm field tonight, they'll be doing it standing on a creamery.