As your airplane descends to Boise Airport, just south of the city, the Boise Mountains and Foothills to the northeast welcome you like a Rocky Mountain bear hug. The high-desert city of 238,429 people sits at 2,704 feet above sea level, with an urban-tinged, Western, and fun ambience.
For meeting and event planners and their attendees, the city sports the expansive Boise Centre convention facility; several hotels with significant meeting space; convenient, safe walkability; and good overall value. “Boise has a unique presence,” says Carrie Hughes, executive director of Visit Boise. “It has a vibe that is welcoming and accessible. It’s a college town surrounded by the outdoors. It has a neighborhood feel and offers indoor/outdoor meeting experiences with plenty for attendees to do. Boise is a city that surprises.”
For many, the city astounds with its memorable attractions, including the poignant Idaho Anne Frank Human Rights Memorial; Jack’s Urban Meeting Place (JUMP), a fantastical team-building and event venue that mixes art, vintage tractors, and light-filled meeting spaces; and Freak Alley Gallery, the Pacific Northwest’s largest open-air, multiartist mural gallery. Both Visit Boise and Boise Centre offer significant event-planning assistance, and restaurants with group dining feature everything from Basque pintxos (bite-size bar snacks) to Boise Brewing Co.’s Better Hazy Than Never India pale ale. Carolyn VanWinkle, senior communications manager of the Northwest Energy Efficiency Alliance of Portland, Oregon, hosted the organization’s annual Efficiency Exchange conference at Boise Centre in early May. She notes, “Boise is simply a fun city.”
The One-Stop Shop
The epicenter of Boise meetings, Boise Centre, has two wings united by a concourse. The original Boise Centre West opened in 1990 with 50,000 square feet of meeting space, and the convention center expanded in 2017, adding 36,000 square feet with Boise Centre East. With 31 flexible meeting rooms—including three ballrooms—Boise Centre works well for groups of up to 1,000 attendees. Meeting planners also can take advantage of Idaho Central Arena, with 5,000 seats and an ice sheet that can be covered for gatherings of up to 1,432 people.
Mary-Michael Rodgers, associate director of communications and digital strategy for Boise Centre, notes the staff helps planners in many ways. “Every planner who organizes an event with Boise Centre has access to a true one-stop shop for coordinating all event details,” she says. “Planners have a dedicated person to talk with, which streamlines communication and ensures nothing falls through the cracks. Boise Centre staff talks with them about logistics, room layouts, labor requirements, exhibitor needs, catering preferences, and details of loading in and out. We make it an easy experience for planners.”
In addition to the helpful Boise Centre staff, one of the key attributes of the convention center is its downtown location. It is within walking distance of 2,000 hotel guest rooms, plus numerous restaurants suitable for groups, many with patio dining.
VanWinkle says, alongside Boise Centre’s staff, Visit Boise’s team also helped significantly with planning the Efficiency Exchange conference. “Visit Boise was excellent,” she says. “We met Senior Group Sales Manager Shannon Fullerton two years in advance of the conference, and she took us to many different hotels and gave us the lay of the land in terms of things like restaurants. She helped us pull everything together, and she also coordinated a meeting with people at Boise Centre.”
The Greater Boise Auditorium District, the government entity that owns Boise Centre, recently purchased a 6 1/2-acre plot of land four blocks away. Although development planning is in its infant stages, the land might someday be home to a multiuse event center suitable for exhibitions, conferences, and sports events, or perhaps be a location to build a second convention center. Rodgers says she expects results of a study that could determine the land’s development future later this year.
Hotels Near the Action
Planners and attendees gathering in Boise have many hotels to choose from within walking distance of the convention center in the downtown core and beyond. The Grove Hotel connects to Boise Centre and Idaho Central Arena via concourse, with its largest meeting room, the Grand Ballroom, seating 546 attendees theater-style. The hotel, under the same ownership as the arena, also offers suites overlooking the ice, plus a fourth-floor outdoor terrace with firepits, retractable shade sails, and views of the Boise Foothills.
Another distinctive meetings venue, Hotel Renegade, is an architecturally rich boutique property with 122 rooms and 5,100 square feet of meeting space with a maximum capacity of 179. New on the scene is the dual-branded AC Hotel Boise Downtown and Element by Marriott Boise Downtown, which opened in May and features a rooftop ballroom and outdoor terrace. Also downtown, the 110-room Inn at 500 Capitol exudes an artistic and luxurious vibe, and it boasts the beautiful Socrates Room for board meetings and other smaller gatherings.
For planners preferring a midcentury-modern resort setting with a hipster vibe, The Riverside Hotel, 2 miles from downtown along the Boise River, boasts meeting space galore, indoor and outdoor saltwater pools, and a location adjacent to Telaya Wine Co., which itself offers three event spaces, plus private tastings and tours. The hotel sits along the Boise River Greenbelt, a 25-mile tree-lined and paved pathway that follows the winding river. Also nearby is Boise Whitewater Park, where adventurous attendees can surf or boogie board on gnarly, human-engineered waves created by huge panels that go up and down in the Boise River.
Distinctively Boise
JUMP is a downtown hub for creative team building and fun off-site receptions. With 51 historic tractors and steam engines dating to 1885, its unusual mix of art, maker studios, 13 light-filled meeting spaces, a five-story slide, museum of mechanical potato-farming history, and multiple terraces, JUMP creates a memorable atmosphere for attendees.
JUMP Event Manager Karen White says, “JUMP is an inspiring place to dream about what you are doing in the world and about how you want to make it better. It is a place where people can come and think creatively about what they are passionate about.” For private events, JUMP works with nonprofits and businesses on team building, brainstorming, and other activities that benefit attendees, especially those who are also colleagues.
Freak Alley Gallery, bordered by Eighth, Ninth, Bannock, and Idaho streets downtown, is a vibrant collection of murals on public display. From what began in 2002 with drawings created by Boise artist Colby Akers on the alley doorway of the former Moon Cafe, Freak Alley Gallery constantly evolves today, with new works of art created every year.
Also downtown, a short walk from Boise Centre, is the Basque block, an area influenced by the descendants of Basque settlers from southwestern Europe who came to Idaho to herd sheep in the late 1800s. Tara McElhose-Eiguren, co-owner of The Basque Market, a marketplace and restaurant on the block, notes, “We are the only Basque block in the U.S., and the area has the [country’s] only Basque museum. By coming to the block and into the market, attendees will get a taste of Basque culture without ever leaving the country.” McElhose-Eiguren adds that the restaurant serves traditional specialties and dishes that aren’t Basque but have been adapted, such as paella, which chefs memorably and colorfully cook in 5-foot-wide, metal, wok-like pans. The market itself seats 25 people, and it also features an outdoor patio. Larger groups can work with the market to arrange the closure of the block and later open hours at the museum for attendees.
About half a mile from Boise Centre, the Idaho Anne Frank Human Rights Memorial is an inspiring, .81-acre, outdoor garden with sculptures; artistic representations of the Frank family’s hiding place in Amsterdam during World War II; bucolic, shady spaces for reflection; and powerful quotations etched in stone. The quotes include one from “The Diary of a Young Girl,” dated April 11, 1944, in which Frank writes, “One day, this terrible war will be over. The time will come when we’ll be people again and not just Jews! Who has set us apart from the rest? Who has put us through such suffering?” Boise schoolchildren who were moved by a traveling exhibit about Frank that came to Boise in the late 1990s thought up the idea for the memorial garden. Private donations funded the construction, completed in 2002. The neighboring Philip E. Batt Education Building, which opened in 2024, has guided tours and rentable meeting space replete with natural light and curated works of art.
Group touring the Idaho Anne Frank Human Rights Memorial || CREDIT Boise Centre
About 45 minutes from Boise, Cascade Raft & Kayak takes groups on guided whitewater rafting trips on the Payette River, which tops out at formidable, yet manageable (if you hold on tight) Class 3 rapids. Other intriguing team-building activities include glass-blowing classes at Boise Art Glass, winery tours and tastings with Wine Adventures Boise Wine Tours LLC, historical and comedy-filled excursions from Boise Trolley Tours, and culinary journeys courtesy of Indulge Boise Food Tours.
For planners, there is a lot to like in Boise. VanWinkle agrees: “Boise knocked it out of the park, and it was the perfect location for our attendees. It felt cozy, fun, and frictionless.”
