Boise, Idaho. Katie Warren/Business Insider

Boise, Idaho, is booming: Microbreweries, luxury condos, and tech firms are popping up in the Pacific Northwest city of about 229,000 people.

Boise saw an 18.2% population jump from 2010 to 2018 - and it was the fastest-growing city in the country between 2017 and 2018, according to Forbes. In 2019, the Idaho capital was ranked as the best place to live for millennials, as well as the best US city to buy a house. And it has a growing tech scene, with some Silicon Valley tech companies opening offices there to escape skyrocketing costs in the Bay Area.

But Boise's growth hasn't been all smooth sailing. As people flock to the Idaho capital, housing costs have shot up as well. The average home price in Boise jumped almost 12% between 2017 and 2018. The average rent has increased by roughly 7% in the past year. And wages haven't kept up, leaving many longtime residents struggling to afford their living costs.

Intrigued by the city's evolving identity, I spent four days there in November. What I found was a city that seems poised for explosive growth.

Millennials fleeing the cost of living in cities like NYC and San Francisco are finding a haven in Boise

People - and millennials in particular - are moving away from big cities like San Francisco and New York City because of skyrocketing housing costs, Business Insider's Hillary Hoffower recently reported.

Ryan Miller, a 28-year-old marketing manager for Jelli, a Silicon Valley radio ad-tech company that opened an office in Boise in 2017 and was bought by iHeartMedia in 2018, first moved to Boise for college.

Miller, originally from the Los Angeles area, moved back to California after college, but she quickly realized she missed Boise and moved back in 2016.

"I was a marketing manager [in Los Angeles] as well, and I felt like I was doing just fine, but it was 'California just fine,'" Miller told me. "I came here and I feel like I have so much more time in my day just because I'm not on the freeway for an hour and a half each way."

Millennials moving from large coastal cities find Boise affordable and pleasant to live in. Katie Warren/Business Insider

She bought a house in Boise earlier this year.

"Being in my late 20s and owning a house wouldn't have happened in California. Ever," Miller said.

Of those moving to Boise from out of state, California is the top place they're moving from, according to the Boise Valley Economic Partnership. The median home price in Boise is about $350,000, compared with $850,000 in Los Angeles and $1.3 million in San Francisco.

Boise's location in southwestern Idaho makes it perfectly positioned to access several major cities. Boise is only a two-hour flight from San Francisco, the country's biggest tech hub, and Denver, another Western city that people are moving to in droves. It's just an hour and a half to both Seattle and Portland.

Boise offers a work-life balance that transplants say is nearly impossible to find in large coastal cities

Several of the people I talked to in Boise said their quality of life had drastically increased after moving to the Idaho capital from cities like Los Angeles and Seattle.

Josh Carter, a 37-year-old product manager at Jelli, moved to Boise from San Diego with his wife and newborn baby in 2015 and found the work-life culture in Boise to be a huge step up. It's particularly ideal for seasoned tech workers, he said.

One of Boise's main draws is its proximity to nature, according to residents. Katie Warren/Business Insider

"Take an engineer who's been at it for five-plus years: They have a family, they're commuting two to four hours a day, and they're just getting burned out," Carter said. "OK, well, you come to Boise, and you no longer have that huge separation from your family. It's a much more realistic work-life-balance culture."

Instead of working 60 hours a week, you work 40 to 45 hours a week and gain even more hours back from the commute, he said.

"So now you can spend it with your family and do stuff with your kids," Carter said. "You can get outside and go hiking and fishing and hunting."

Boise did strike me, almost immediately, as a highly active and outdoorsy city. It's one of the most bike-friendly cities in America, and almost every single resident I talked to cited the proximity to hiking and mountain biking in the nearby foothills as one of their favorite things about Boise. As I strolled the Greenbelt, a 25-mile tree-lined path along the river through the heart of the city, I saw many people who appeared to be cycling to work or going for a morning jog.

As I quickly discovered, there's also no shortage of places to eat, drink, and shop in downtown Boise itself.

Boise's downtown is bustling with microbreweries, hip coffee shops, and restaurants

For a city of 229,000 people, Boise has a downtown area that's surprisingly lively, full of microbreweries and cider houses, burger joints, farm-to-table restaurants, healthy cafés, and colorful outdoor murals. In short, it was full of the types of establishments that appeal to millennials - especially millennials who are used to big-city living.

"In the last 10 years, Idaho's economy has become more diverse, which can easily be seen in the boom downtown," Wes Jost, a senior vice president and manager of Zions Bank's Idaho commercial real-estate group, told me. "New people and businesses are continuing to relocate to Boise, placing our area in growth mode for the last six to seven years."

People stroll and cycle down Eighth Street in downtown Boise on a recent November day. Katie Warren/Business Insider

Strolling around the walkable downtown area, I passed several hip coffee shops that wouldn't look out of place in Brooklyn; a store selling fresh-roasted, artisan nuts and craft beer; and a shop dedicated to healthy dog food and treats, with a sign that said "Dogs welcome! People tolerated."

What's more is that actually going to these places won't cost you an arm and a leg, as it might well in New York City.

At Bittercreek Alehouse, a popular downtown beer bar that opened in 1996, you can choose from more than 40 beers on tap that start at $2 for a half-pint and $5 for a pint. At other bars downtown, a pint costs $4.

Going out for beers in Boise won't break the bank. Bittercreek Alehouse/Facebook

In New York City, on the other hand, the average cost of a pint of beer is $7.70 - and I know from living here for more than three years that it's often much pricier, particularly in Manhattan.

A Trader Joe's opened downtown in 2014, and the trendy fitness companies Crunch Fitness and ClassPass have come to Boise in the past three years, as well as UpCycle Studio, an indoor cycling and yoga studio with a kombucha and cold-brew bar.

To keep up with the influx of people moving to Boise, luxury apartment buildings are popping up downtown

The city's real-estate scene is also evolving with this influx of big-city transplants.

In 2018, a luxury building called the Fowler opened its doors. Its studio and one-bedroom apartments start at about $1,300, while two-bedroom, two-bathroom units start at about $1,880. For comparison, the median rent for a one-bedroom in Boise is $990, according to Zumper.

The Fowler, a luxury apartment building, opened downtown in 2018. Katie Warren/Business Insider

This fall, construction began on a mixed-use downtown building that will include luxury apartments on its upper levels. And Visum Development, a New York firm, unveiled plans for an eight-story, 75-unit residential building downtown, Boise Dev reported.

In a newsletter, the developer said it chose Boise for its new project because of its recent "dramatic economic and demographic growth" partially due to "the tech exodus from cities like San Francisco and Seattle and the movement of senior citizens to Idaho."

But growth doesn't come without a new set of problems

Despite all this growth and activity, Boise's designation as the best US city to buy a house doesn't ring true for many longtime residents because "Idaho incomes have not grown in proportion to home prices," Jost told me.

Housing prices in the Boise-Nampa metro area rose faster than in any other city in the US between 2018 and 2019, an August report from the Federal Housing Finance Agency said. Prices increased by 13.6%, compared with the national average of 5%.

Enid Beall, who was born and raised in Boise and spent almost 20 years in Los Angeles before moving back, bought a home in March for $215,000 - but she still worries about skyrocketing housing costs in Boise.

If property taxes rise enough, "I may not be able to afford my own home," Beall told me.

Lauren McLean, Boise's newly elected mayor, moved to the Idaho capital with her husband 21 years ago to buy a house and enjoy the city's easy access to nature.

"It's becoming more and more difficult for people to do that here because of the increased cost of living, the lack of good transportation that moves people from home to work, and lack of houses whose prices are actually in line with our wages here," McLean told me at her campaign office in Boise.

According to McLean, the key to successful growth in Boise is that it happens sustainably and mindfully.

"Because if we're not careful and if we don't include all voices and think hard about how we create a city for everyone ... then we risk becoming that place like everywhere else where you just live, you work, you do your thing, and we lose that deep intentional connection to place and people that I feel is really unique about Boise," she said.

After my visit, it was evident that change is coming to Boise - the only question now is how it will play out.

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