Boise
At press time, Boise Centre was on track to complete a $47.5 million expansion this month. Included in the expansion is a new ballroom with a spacious glass-enclosed lobby, a variety of meeting rooms and an outdoor terrace overlooking a civic plaza and the nearby Boise Foothills. Boise Centre now offers meeting planners more than 80,000 square feet of flexible meeting and event spaces all interconnected by a newly completed concourse.
In addition to the convention center expansion, three new hotels are opening near Boise Centre in 2017: Hyatt Place Boise/Downtown with 152 guest rooms and more than 2,700 square feet of meeting space, Inn at 500 Capitol with 113 guest rooms and several event spaces, and the 186-room Residence Inn Boise Downtown.
Just outside Boise Centre is the newly renovated The Grove Plaza. The $5 million renovation of Boise’s local landmark civic plaza has recently finished and the plaza is open for a weekly summer concert series and farmers market. The renovation included the installation of a new fountain, shade trees, seating and a sound system for outdoor events.
The AAA Four Diamond-rated, 250-room The Grove Hotel, which offers more than 14,000 square feet of meeting space, is now connected to CenturyLink Arena via the Boise Centre expansion’s interior walkway. CenturyLink Arena offers an additional 22,000 square feet of space for tradeshows, exhibits and other events. The Grove Hotel also recently joined the largest loyalty program for independent hotels, Stash Hotel Rewards, and now offers an incentive of up to 40,000 Stash Reward points to meeting planners who book a new piece of business with the hotel, or its sister Boise property, Hotel 43.
Coeur d’Alene
The Coeur d’Alene Resort recently announced a multimillion-dollar renovation to the property’s guest rooms and conference center. This is the final phase of an extensive property-wide update that started a few years ago. The conference center is scheduled for completion this fall and the guest room updates will be finished in spring 2018.