Still waiting for the long ‘Hello’

Several years from now, University of Idaho students will be able to stroll from the University of Idaho Administration Building to the corner of Sixth and Jackson streets using one pathway — a long-envisioned pedestrian corridor intended to link the university to downtown Moscow.

The ultimate goal is to extend the Hello Walk on the UI campus northeast through campus, over Paradise Creek and terminate at the corner of Sixth and Jackson streets.

Bill Belknap, deputy city supervisor of community planning and design, said the pathway would be installed in increments as land uses change or transition and new developments occur. He said it could take 10 or 20 years before the Hello Walk is completely connected.

Belknap said Crites Seed warehouses constructed in the area parallel to railroad tracks and the creek created a barrier between the university and downtown.

“It was essentially a wall between downtown and campus with the only way through being Sixth Street or potentially College (Street),” he said.

Belknap said the section of path that would cross the vacant Moscow Urban Renewal Agency-owned property on the southwest corner of Sixth and Jackson streets is intended to be fairly straight. Beyond that corner, the path could meander to facilitate future development.

“It’s not written in stone that it has to be a straight diagonal, but the agency did want to make sure at the corner of Sixth and Jackson that it was prominent and … you could see that pedestrian corridor,” Belknap said. “So we have pushed pretty hard to have it be straight across our property, but beyond that, I think certainly there’s flexibility for that alignment to work with future development.”

Jodi Walker, UI director of communications, said the university’s five-year plan does not address the extension of the Hello Walk through campus, but it is part of the university's master plan. She said it is possible it could be added or created as a priority for the university.

(Editor's note: The previous paragraph has been edited for clarity, and is different than the version originally published)

“It’s a great idea and we’d love anything to help connect the university with downtown,” Walker said.

The first extension of the Hello Walk is proposed through the agency’s Sixth and Jackson streets property. The path is expected to run diagonally through the middle of the property toward the UI campus.

Rusty Olps, a local developer, plans to build a three-story building — commercial units on the first floor and residential on the top two floors — on one side of the path (Sixth Street frontage) and a commercial building on the other side (Jackson Street frontage).

At a MURA meeting last month, Olps said he has been in communication with Andrew Crapuchettes, CEO of Emsi in Moscow and owner of the grain silos property on the south side of the agency’s property. Crapuchettes told the Daily News that he would like to have food trucks and possibly other business ventures on his property.

A Mexican food truck, Taqueria Las Torres, already operates on Crapuchettes’ property and he said a number of food truck owners over the years have inquired about setting up shop at that location.

Steve McGeehan, MURA chairman, said connecting the university and downtown is a central goal for the agency and its Legacy Crossing Urban Renewal District.

“I think it’s going to be something that the entire community will enjoy,” McGeehan said.

Hello Walk beginnings

The Hello Walk was named after Alfred Upham, president of the university in the 1920s, who insisted on saying “hello” to people he passed on his walk from his house to the Administration Building.

Connecting the university to downtown is a concept that dates back to 1907 when distinguished landscape architect and planner John Charles Olmsted recommended the university expand its holdings north, south and east, but especially east to Main Street and the railroad right-of-way, said Nels Reese, a longtime Moscow resident.

Reese has had his hands in the Hello Walk proposal member of the Moscow Planning and Zoning Commission and as a now-retired UI architecture professor.

“The Hello Walk idea is really a fulfillment of Olmsted’s idea of linking the university and downtown,” Reese said.

Reese said the UI College of Art and Architecture started to look at the industrial property in the Sixth and Jackson streets area in 1990. Reese said the college fumbled around with the area’s potential for quite a while and then “the big idea hit us.”

The ‘big idea’

He said the “big idea” grew from a UI architecture student’s project in 2007.

A Moscow 2002 Downtown Revitalization Plan included a concept of a direct walking connection between downtown and the university.

Belknap said in 2005 and 2006, the railroad was removing service from the community and abandoning historical rights of way that were located between Jackson Street and Paradise Creek.

“That change of use — when we saw both the railroads removing service and we saw historical grain warehouses being demolished at that time, there was an interest in trying to help shape the vision for the redevelopment of that area in the future in that key location between the university of Idaho and downtown,” Belknap said.

Understanding the difficulty in achieving the Hello Walk expansion, the MURA purchased the Sixth and Jackson streets property in 2010 with the intent to develop Hello Walk and then resell the remnant land.

The City Council then adopted design standards in 2012 to guide the redevelopment of the core 23-acre former agricultural industrial area. The Hello Walk proposal was included in the design standards.

Belknap said old buildings on the property were removed in the couple years after the agency acquired the property in 2010. Environmental remediation on the property also occurred mostly from 2015 to 2018, he said.

Design hurdles

A mixed-use development proposal that included Sangria Grille, currently located in the Palouse Mall parking lot in Moscow, did not come to fruition on the Sixth and Jackson streets property.

Olps’ mixed-use project is now proposed and slated for construction this summer.

Business owners George Skandalos and Carly Lilly, who proposed the Sangria Grille project, and Olps have struggled at times developing design concepts on the two triangular parcels on either side of the proposed Hello Walk.

Belknap said there has been no talk of giving up on the Hello Walk concept. He said developers knew the vision of the city and MURA included the Hello Walk cutting through the property.

“Some could argue (it) is a limitation for the development of Sixth and Jackson but I also look at it as an opportunity,” McGeehan said.

Garrett Cabeza can be reached at (208) 883-4631, or by email to gcabeza@dnews.com.