The intersection of Fairview Ave. and Eagle Rd. has been the busiest in the state of Idaho for a number of years. Which is all the more remarkable because one whole corner is a place not many people go.
The northwest quadrant of Eagle & Fairview is a throwback to a time when the city that is now Meridian was largely made up of farm fields and pastures.
Kleiner family owns site
The Kleiner Trust owns the 72.5-acre site. It’s not actively listed for sale, there are no development applications, and other than a few farm workers and perhaps trespassers — has been largely empty for decades.
You might recognize the Kleiner family name. Nearby, Julius M. Kleiner Memorial Park was donated by the Kleiner family to the City of Meridian in 2010 for a large regional park. But the park wasn’t it for the Kleiner family’s land holdings in the area.
In addition, the family owned the land under what is now the Village at Meridian, the large shopping, dining, and entertainment center that sits along the Fairview and Eagle corner. The Kleiners sold that land to California developer Centercal, which put together the Village. The Kleiners also formerly owned two large parcels along Fairview – one is now the Carmax dealership, and the other – another empty field, is set for an apartment development from Brighton Corp. and Ball Ventures.
The family acquired the significant land holdings in the once-rural part of Meridian in 1944, when Julius M. Kleiner bought it from Morrison Knudsen Company. The Kleiner family later used the Meridian property as a dairy farm. It continued that use until the 1970s.
The future?
With most of the Kleiner family landholdings sold off or developed, what will become of the big parcel on Fairview and Eagle?
In 2018, Centercal posted a site plan to its site that showed a significant mixed-use development that in some ways mirrored the Village across the street. It included two significant retail sites – the sizes of a Costco or WinCo Foods, as well as multi-family residential, restaurants, a hotel, and more. But at the time, Centercal told BoiseDev the plan was posted in error and was only an internal idea. The plans never came to fruition.
The Ada County Assessor values the site at $94,200. While the land is likely worth much more, the State of Idaho gives a sizable exemption to property that is actively used for agricultural purposes. The field has been planted this year and workers have been seen on the property actively farming the site.
A representative for TOK Commercial, which handles the family’s local commercial real estate dealings, did not comment about any plan to sell or otherwise use the site.
