Urban Renewal Agency buys King's building

Wednesday, October 26, 2011

If all goes as planned, the King's building will be home to a major department store by next spring. Photo by Brian S. Orban

The Mountain Home Urban Renewal Agency has purchased the King's building in anticipation of leasing the downtown core facility to a major retail chain store.

The URA signed the paperwork Friday, paying $235,000 for the building that has been vacant for a decade.

It anticipates spending anywhere from $300,000 to $500,000 to remodel the building. Since the building was originally constructed half a century ago, changes in building code requirements will force the remodeling work in order to bring it up to modern code standards.

Waiting in the wings is "a national family branded retail store" that has shown interest in leasing the building. The name of the national chain store has not been released, pending an official announcement by the firm (which the Mountain Home News has agreed to respect), but it is a company that began as a regional chain and has gone national in recent years. Three of its growing number of stores are located in cities in Idaho similar in size to Mountain Home and a spot-check of officials in those cities drew universal praise for the company's operations in their communities.

If all goes well, the company hopes to sign a lease by the first of the year and be open some time in late spring of 2012.

For the full story, pick up a copy of the Mountain Home News or click on this link to subscribe to the newspaper's online edition.

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It will be nice to have the kings building functional again and a new store to boot :)I wonder who it is ?

-- Posted by just1 on Wed, Oct 26, 2011, at 3:48 PM
CJW:

Best way to get an answer to your question:

Economic Development Director Paula Riggs, 587-2173.

Or Mayor Tom Rist, 587-2104.

email: mayor@mountain-home.us

-- Posted by Councilman Schroeder on Sat, Oct 29, 2011, at 10:18 AM
Good luck trying to open "anything" in dying downtown Mtn Home...our lovely city council along with the "shifty-fifty" will do everything in their power to stop it!

Besides, according to the city zoning commission their isn't enough parking spaces there to open a business...that's the story they told the Catholic parish...

I wish this new business the best of luck, because they are going to need it with dealing with our local elected officials...

-- Posted by DUMBFOUNDED IN IDAHO on Sat, Oct 29, 2011, at 2:47 PM
CJW You just let the cat out of the bag LOL!

-- Posted by MsMarylin on Tue, Nov 1, 2011, at 4:36 PM

Response by Brenda Fincher, Bus. Mgr., MHNews:
I am so amused you get great humor in this. I have been extremely busy the last two days and was not babysitting the dang website and had not looked. Is this not the most ridiculous thing anyone has ever seen when adults act this way? Wow!! I guess I will never understand some peoples behavior. Just how many personalities can one person have?????????
Brenda I'm not understanding your meaning???????

-- Posted by MsMarylin on Tue, Nov 1, 2011, at 5:26 PM
lets just hope that the people dont shoot themselves in the foot and say no to this new business coming in. the City Council and the County Commissioners should bend over backwards to help out ANY no businesses coming into Mountain Home or Elmore County.

-- Posted by biggin9900 on Tue, Nov 8, 2011, at 4:23 PM
who is the mountain home urban renewal agency? where did they get the $235,000 to buy this facility. how about parking?

-- Posted by goodllama2 on Fri, Mar 30, 2012, at 4:36 PM
My wife and I discovered Mountain Home last week, as we were driving from California to Montana via the old highways. We loved all of the towns that we discovered, and the King's Building was one of our favorite sights. We were really sad to see how many empty buildings we saw on every Main St. that we came to, however. We'd love it if the new King's tenant is a huge success (unless it is a Wal-Mart), and that it helps all of the other businesses in the area. Best of luck to them and to the rest of downtown Mountain Home.

-- Posted by Dave van Hulsteyn on Mon, Aug 13, 2012, at 1:14 PM

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