A 60,000-square-foot medical building is coming to Silverstone, the county puts $250K toward rats, and 92 today

Ninety-two today, which after this week counts as a mercy. It's the first day of the slide — the forecast walks downhill from here and lands somewhere in the seventies by Sunday, so if you've been putting off anything that involves being outdoors for more than four minutes, the window is opening.

Today: a three-story medical building filed for the Silverstone corridor, Ada County finding $250,000 and a September meeting to deal with its rat problem, a BBQ championship coming to Kleiner Park, the answer to the Potato Days mystery a lot of you wrote in about, and a Thursday Spotlight on a downtown wine room with two thousand bottles in it. Let's get into it.

🧠 Today's trivia: You drive Ustick Road. But before it was a road across Meridian, "Ustick" was something else entirely — and a Boise doctor is the reason the name stuck. What was it? (Answer at the bottom.)

Six things worth putting on the calendar, all of them physically in Meridian, all of them new to this newsletter. Already covered and not repeated here: Art Spark and the Main Street Market on Saturday, The Princess Bride at Victory Gardens Friday and Saturday, Celebrate Hope at The Village, line dancing at Big Al's, and the Monday Night Market.

Thursday, Aug. 27

Saturday, Sept. 5

Sunday, Sept. 13

Thursday, Sept. 17

Friday–Sunday, Sept. 25–27

Saturday–Sunday, Oct. 3–4

Standing ask, and we'll keep making it: if something is happening in Meridian that never shows up on a calendar — a church rummage sale, a garage band in somebody's driveway, a school fundraiser — hit reply. Half of what's good in this town isn't listed anywhere.

Today: mostly sunny and hot, high near 92, low around 60 tonight. No precipitation in the forecast and no advisories out for Meridian.

Plan for the higher end. The live Boise strip has 94 for today against Meridian's 92, so the valley is running a couple of degrees hotter than the point forecast — the third run in a row that's held. If you're working outside, assume mid-90s and pack the extra water.

The weekend is the story. The National Weather Service has Friday near 90 and Saturday near 88. Sunday is where it gets interesting: CBS2's Eric Walker, writing Tuesday morning, has a Pacific low and a cold front pushing Treasure Valley highs into the upper 70s to low 80s — close to 20 degrees off this week's peak.

Fine print: the NWS point-forecast file we pull has been frozen on the same version for four cycles now, and it still lists Sunday at 87. We went with the live forecast for Sunday because it was written this week and the stale file wasn't. Today's 92 is the number we trust — the frozen file and the live Boise reading agree on it within two degrees.

Two stories today rather than three, and we'd rather say that plainly than pad it out. The Meridian desks have been quiet since Tuesday, and three otherwise good stories got killed on age — see the note at the bottom of this section.

Meridian developer Ahlquist has filed plans with the city for a three-story, nearly 60,000-square-foot medical office building on Silverstone Wy., just off I-84 near Eagle Rd. The application shows space for multiple tenants, a covered drive-up drop-off aisle and 131 parking stalls, and the building would tie into the wider Eagle View Landing development — the campus that already holds Ahlquist's own headquarters, TitleOne, Power Engineers, ICCU, Kiln, Topgolf, Houston Hot Chicken, Rockbox Fitness and a Hyatt Place.

Chief leasing officer Mark Cleverley told BoiseDev the building will likely be independent clinical space for doctors looking to house their practices — it could support a surgery center, but that isn't in the plans right now. He said three letters of intent are signed, and declined to say who they're from. Groundbreaking is targeted for October, with a goal of opening in early 2028.

Two more medical office buildings already sit across the street, and a Nutex Health microhospital has been floated down the road on Rackham Wy. — though no formal application has been filed for that one, and Blue Cross of Idaho has asked the state to look into Nutex's business model. Mayor Robert Simison has said he wants Meridian to be the "healthcare epicenter of Idaho." Whatever you make of that ambition, the permits keep arriving.

Read more → BoiseDev, Sydney Kidd, published Wednesday, Aug. 26.

Central District Health's board has approved up to $250,000 in one-time funding for rat mitigation across Ada County — and, unusually, there is no spending plan attached to it yet. Director Kristen Ryan says the agency is "really new to the party" and is asking residents and other local governments where the money would actually do some good before committing it.

Ideas on the table so far: a single central place for residents to report sightings, free snap traps for homeowners, and paid work with licensed pest-control operators in the areas seeing the most activity. Ryan's read on the whole situation is that "coordination is really lacking here" — several agencies working the same problem without talking to each other much.

The date to know is Tuesday, Sept. 2, when Ada County commissioners, Boise city leaders and representatives from other local governments hold a public discussion on rat control at the Ada County Courthouse. Meridian is in Ada County, which makes this your meeting too. In the meantime, CDH has prevention guidance and a sighting-report form on its website — and the boring advice still applies: lid on the compost, lid on the trash, tray under the bird feeder.

Read more → CBS2 / KBOI, Healy Reinholt, published Monday, Aug. 24.

Killed on age this morning, in case you saw them elsewhere and wondered: the Ibaia fire-access story (we ran it Aug. 23), the English Channel swim (seven days old), and the ACHD chip-seal update (nine days old). We hold news items to five days. If a story matters and we can't date it, it doesn't run.

Featured wine shop & pub: Level Up Lounge

One thing up front. The lounge's own leveluplounge.club site is down as of this morning, and the space at 830 N. Main now shows up as Boran Lounge — same suite, same Thursday bingo night, new name, new phone. The details below are current as of the new site; the rest is what the room has been.

Overview. If you've walked past 830 N. Main and wondered what's behind the dark front, it's a boutique wine store and tasting room that opened downtown in the summer of 2025. Owner Wayne Martin — who also runs Las Calaveras down the street — stocks roughly 2,000 bottles from every wine region on earth, and the point is that you can treat it three different ways: grab a bottle to go, open it right there at the bar, or just order a glass and stay a while.

Highlights

Ambiance & Experience. Martin's own description is "very swanky, and very sexy," which is a bold thing to say about your own bar but not an unfair one — low light, dark seating, speakeasy energy. It's strictly 21 and over, and it leans toward lingering rather than a quick round. There's a bingo-and-trivia night that turns up there most Thursdays, if you want the room at its loudest.

Location & Contact

Operating Hours. Per the current site: Thursday 5–9:30 p.m., Friday and Saturday 5–10:30 p.m., closed Sunday, and Monday through Wednesday reserved for private events. That's a change from the Tuesday-through-Saturday schedule the room opened on, so call before you drive over.

Final pour: a two-thousand-bottle wine room on Main Street is not the sort of thing a town of this size is obliged to have, so it's worth knowing it's there. Visit the lounge →

Editorial feature, not a paid placement — we picked it, we verified it against the Chamber directory and published reporting, and nobody was contacted. If you'd like this slot for your own business, it's available.

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.

Two development filings in one week will do that to a person.

A town. Ustick — pronounced "YOU-stick" — was a real settlement, platted by Dr. Harlan P. Ustick, a physician and land developer who owned orchard acreage west of Boise.

Here's the part that makes it a good story. Ustick was a promoter of the Boise Valley Railway Company, which was building the electric interurban line out toward Caldwell in the early 1900s. He made sure the streetcars were routed along what is now Ustick Road — running, conveniently, right past his own orchards. Then he platted a townsite on it and sold parcels to buyers who had every reason to believe the rail line meant the place would grow.

It didn't, quite. Electric service on the Boise Valley interurban was discontinued in 1928, and the town outlasted its streetcars by a few decades before the Ustick post office finally closed in 1958. Boise's expansion eventually swallowed the townsite whole. The road is essentially all that's left — and it now runs clear across a city that didn't exist as anything much when the name was chosen.

Sources: KTVB, "Get to Know Idaho: The history of the town of Ustick"; Idaho Press, "The history of the Ustick Townsite" and "Meet Harlan P. Ustick"; Boise State Public Radio, America 250 short histories. The 1928 end of electric service is separately confirmed by Idaho State Historical Society Reference Series No. 220. We have not published a plat year, because the sources don't agree on one.