Water Damage Restoration in Meridian, ID

The Wood Rose Apartments, set to open Dec. 3 in Meridian, are different than other apartment complexes you might have seen — or might soon see — in the city.

The affordable-housing development off Ustick Road has 46 apartments arranged in seven two-story buildings designed to resemble single-family homes. It’s Meridian’s first affordable-apartment complex “in many years,” according to Benjamin Cushman, a communications coordinator at the Idaho Housing and Finance Association, a quasi-governmental housing agency.

The 41 affordable units and five market-rate units offered at Wood Rose were envisioned by The Housing Co., a local nonprofit created by Idaho Housing and Finance. The development, approved by the Meridian City Council in 2022, was designed with goal of addressing housing shortages in the Treasure Valley.

The apartments are now almost complete at 3321 N. Cooper Lane, on less than four acres northeast of Ustick and Linder roads.

The affordable units at Wood Rose are reserved for people making between 30% and 60% of Meridian’s median income. The U.S. Census Bureau data puts Meridian’s median household income at just over $100,000.

Cushman told the Statesman via email that one-bedroom income-restricted apartments at Wood Rose range from $790 to $955 per month, and the same apartment is offered at market rate for $1,250 per month. Wood Rose also offers two- and three-bedroom apartments, also at below-market rates.

To be able to charge below market rates, The Housing Co. secured a $1 million low-income housing tax credit from the U.S. Treasury Department in 2023, according to Idaho Housing and Finance, which is responsible for allocating the credits in Idaho. This is Meridian’s first allocation in at least six years.

David Miles, Mayor Robert Simison’s chief of staff, told the Idaho Statesman that Wood Rose is the only affordable housing project he is aware of in the last 20 years, besides the recently approved, not-yet-built Centrepoint Apartments.

Cushman said the project was made possible by partnerships with “a mission-driver Realtor, Okhee Chang, who understood the importance of affordable housing”; financing from Red Stone Equity Partners, Banner Bank, and Idaho Housing and Finance; and cooperation from the city.

The result is the group of two-story buildings less than a mile west of Settlers Park, complete with a playground, a gym, a clubhouse with a business center, and 90 parking spaces.

Cushman said construction is still ongoing in phases. The first building was finished at the end of October and the last will be completed by mid-December, he said. Cushman confirmed via text that the project cost $12.4 million, including land, construction and permits.

Wood Rose started accepting applications early this summer, and at this point, 17 households have moved in, Cushman said.

“The remaining households will move in over the next month,” Cushman said. “All apartment homes are spoken for, but people can still apply to be on the waiting list.”.

Damian Hernandez, 48, was living in an another one of The Housing Co.’s properties before he moved into the Wood Rose apartments in mid-September. He told the Statesman he had been waiting for a year for Wood Rose to be built so he could be closer to work.

Hernandez works in distribution for Coca Cola and says he is glad to be in Meridian where often needs to be in-person at different large retailers.

Hernandez said in September he got this job and soon moved into Wood Rose. “Everything fell into place,” he said. He said the apartments are quiet, which is good for him — he wakes up at 4 a.m. for work. “It worked out perfect,” he said.

“It’s not as easy as people think to get in,” he said, describing the process The Housing Co. goes through to vet applicants.

Hernandez’s mother has worked for the nonprofit for several years, and Hernandez said it conducts extensive background and credit checks. To qualify, he said, you have to have good credit, no past evictions and no money owed to utility companies, for example.

“You have to be squeaky clean,” Hernandez said.

He said that with the Treasure Valley growing, his mother sees a lot of people seeking help with housing. “Everybody’s looking for a place to live,” he said.

“When it comes to low-income (housing), people tend to assume the worst of the people that live there,” one of Hernandez’s neighbors at Wood Rose, a mother in her early 30s, told the Statesman. The mother, who wished to remain unnamed, moved into Wood Rose in early November with her husband, who repairs appliances for a living, and their 7-year-old son, who has autism.

“We’re just people trying to pay our rent,” the mother said.

She and her husband say they have been “blown out of the water with the quality” of the apartment.

Other neighbors in Wood Rose include a 39-year-old man who works at a nearby gas station and receives support from Social Security for a disability. The man, who also wished to remain unnamed, said he had moved back in with his parents this spring after attending business classes in Logan, Utah, and was looking for affordable housing options to be able to move out when he discovered The Housing Co.

He said he loves the “quiet” apartments and that they are not what he had imagined.

“Something I would tell people is that affordable housing, low-income housing, whatnot — it doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re dirt poor,” he said. “You can have a job. You can have a life. It just means that you’re below the median.”

Wood Rose is set to officially open with a ribbon cutting Dec. 3. Cushman said he is “proud of how well it fits into the community and neighborhood.”

The next affordable housing development coming to Meridian, Centrepoint Apartments, is set to be very different from Wood Rose. The apartment complex, which was approved by the City Council Nov. 19, will have 239 units in two-, three- and four-story buildings, the Statesman previously reported.

The project received mixed reviews from community members, some of whom argued before the council that the large complex will cause increased traffic and strain on nearby schools. Others believe the project will provide badly needed housing in a rapidly growing city.

Mary Weeks, a 62-year-old Wood Rose resident, provides care for disabled women through Life Inc., a developmental disabilities agency. Weeks told the Statesman she lives in one of Wood Rose’s five market-rate apartments but has been within the low-income range in the past. Weeks said this is the first time in five years she’ll be able to live without roommates.

Her take: “It’s definitely worth it.”

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It’s long been the Bartlett family’s tradition to order food from Costa Vida before watching a Boise State football game together. They didn’t know that following dinner and Boise State’s win over San Diego State on Nov. 1, they would begin feeling violently ill.

That night, all six family members who had eaten food from the Costa Vida on South Innovation Lane in Meridian began to experience intense vomiting, abdominal cramping and diarrhea within three hours of one another, according to Jennifer Bartlett.

The two who picked up food from a different Costa Vida location were the only ones who felt fine.

“I’m a nurse, so I’ve dealt with a lot,” Bartlett, 50, told the Idaho Statesman by phone. “I honestly have never in my life seen anything so violent. It hit so fast. There was really no warning that you were getting sick.”

Between Nov. 2 and Nov. 13, food safety tracking platform iwaspoisoned.com received 54 reports of people experiencing gastrointestinal symptoms shortly after eating at the South Innovation location. The website helps public health agencies and food brands discover potential food-poisoning clusters. Some users reported having to go to the ER for gastrointestinal issues within 24 hours.

“State or local epidemiology (if they choose to investigate) will have the final say on what the exact issue is,” Patrick Quade, the website’s founder and CEO, said by email. “It can’t be explained away as a seasonal bug in the area. We would see a broad rise for data in the area, not a singular spike associated with one facility.”

Central District Health said it received 14 reports of food poisoning between Nov. 3 and Nov. 13, with some reports including multiple people. The government health district, which includes Ada, Boise, Elmore, and Valley counties, said it’s uncommon to see that many reports for a restaurant in the area.

“This number of reports is unusually high, which is why we acted right away,” Maria Ortega, communications manager at Central District Health, said. “We are not aware of any other large clusters of suspected foodborne illnesses.”

The district is investigating whether the illnesses were caused by food poisoning and has sent inspectors out several times since Nov. 3, Ortega said.

Ortega said the district did not receive any reports for other Costa Vida locations and has not seen a general increase in food-poisoning reports elsewhere in the area. There were no previous reports of foodborne illnesses at this location, according to the district.

Founded in Utah in 2003, Costa Vida has more than 90 locations nationwide. The fast-casual restaurants specialize in Mexican food with made-to-order items like tortillas, burritos, tacos, enchiladas, quesadillas, salads and nachos.

Gayle Menlove visited the South Innovation Costa Vida with her three adult daughters on Nov. 4. The next day, all three who ordered a salad began feeling sick, with fevers, stomach cramping and “a lot of turmoil in the digestive tract,” Menlove said.

“I won’t describe anything, but the word violent did come up,” Menlove said. “It was just a horrific kind of reaction.”

Her daughters’ husbands wanted to take them to an emergency room, but they didn’t feel able to get out of bed or be away from a bathroom that long, according to Menlove.

“I crawled into bed, and I just didn’t eat a thing all day, not a single crumb,” Menlove said. “I only could tolerate a couple of sips of water.”

Despite the experience, she said she’ll eat there again.

“Restaurants do their best,” Menlove said. “I know they don’t want to make anyone sick.”

Locally, all six Treasure Valley Costa Vidas are owned by two brothers and their father. The South Innovation Lane location held its grand opening Sept. 19.

Owner Chase Wagstaff said he has been making sure “no stone is left unturned” to ensure the best food-safety practices are followed at the new Meridian location. The restaurant’s food-safety procedures include a signed employee agreement not to work while sick, wearing gloves, handwashing and sanitizing, Wagstaff said. He said Costa Vida restaurants do a complete inventory turnover every two days.

“We had a couple employees that came to work not feeling well, but they were sent home pretty quickly,” Wagstaff said by phone. “We’re doing everything that we can to make sure that we are not the culprit.”

Wagstaff said neither the restaurant nor health inspectors were able to immediately identify anything that could be causing sickness. He wondered if people were inaccurately attributing a seasonal stomach bug to eating at Costa Vida. Whatever the case, Wagstaff said he is trying to ensure all health precautions are taken.

The company sent an additional message to employees asking them to report if they feel ill.

“We’ve been running restaurants for a very long time,” said Wagstaff, who opened the Treasure Valley’s first Costa Vida in 2012. “This is the first time we’ve had anything close to this happen. It’s not confirmed, but with those very small handful of reports around the same time, it’s not something that you can take lightly, even if there’s nothing obvious that could be the culprit in our restaurant.”

This story was originally published November 15, 2024, 4:00 AM.

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