Northgate Development project making progress

It really is happening.

That’s the message developers of the Northgate project wanted to get out on Friday.

The main road through the development is now finished. On Thursday, the public took a tour of the development to learn more about what its future holds.

“I think we needed growth like this for years and we finally got it,” said Ken Pape, one of the partners for the Northgate development.

A lot is going into the development, including a shopping district and an office park for businesses.

Two of the biggest additions are a gated community for adults 55 and older. It’s also a smart community, part of the latest and greatest technology in the development, according to the project partners.

“We think about things like policing and the cost of policing,” said Buck Swaney, the other development partner for Northgate. “We can end up with a neighborhood that reduces those costs, for example, by having external outward surveillance from a lot of the homes. And so smart technologies give us the opportunity to run a cleaner, better city for less money on multiple fronts including water usage, including electricity, and just the cost of providing emergency services.”

The gated community includes 52 homes, half of which have already been sold.

The other big addition is the Portneuf Health Trust campus. It will be a 20-acre medical campus offering services like a small hospital, surgical services, fitness and wellness programs, and much more.

“That’s what we’re looking at is building a place for people that other people don’t have and bringing it here,” Pape said of the project.

“This is the biggest thing since the railroad,” Swaney said. “Nothing has happened here since the railroad days that stood to improve or change Bannock County as much as the Northgate development. I’s going to lead to, not just immediate benefits, in terms of better circulation, in terms of safer circulation for residents, but it’s going to lead to a place where we can begin to more organically grow talent and keep the next generation of white collar, high-paying jobs here.”

During the tour, developers said after looking at 15 possible locations for this development, they picked Pocatello because of all it had to offer.

“Pocatello has this great culture,” Swaney said. “It’s got great belief in itself. We love being here. You have a great college, you’re raising smart kids, everything about this place is great except the outside world doesn’t really understand it, doesn’t really know it yet. So it’s an undiscovered gem.”

“It is an amazing project,” Pape said. “To put something like this together – I think the people should be proud, the community should be proud of what they’ve got in their backyard.”

The roadways in the development are done. Swaney said there’s a mile of new road including an extension of Olympus Drive, plus the new road that connects the whole area, called Northgate Parkway. Even the road is modern. Swaney said for every 1,000 feet of road, it costs about $1 million, which includes the underground power and utilities. He said that’s because it’s built to last for decades and not have to be torn up.

Swaney and Pape said 2019 will see a lot of progress, including the completion of the first medical building and the start of the first quadrant, including some homes. Pape said they are in the process of working with businesses to bring them in, but nothing official has been announced yet.