Plans to build 38 townhomes for St. Luke’s McCall employees were approved last week by the McCall City Council.
The three-story modular townhomes would be built in 10 buildings on a 4.8-acre parcel along Mission Street, next to recently completed McCall-Donnelly School District staff housing.
Each townhome would be about 1,500 square feet and have two or three bedrooms and a two-car garage, which would make up the ground floor of the 32-foot-tall buildings.
“What’s really unique about this project is that rents will be calibrated by income of the tenants, with a goal of rent not being more than 30% of the tenant’s income,” said Steve Millemann, a McCall attorney who presented the application.
The project is estimated to cost about $25 million and will be phased in as funding allows. The first phase is expected to include one building containing four townhomes.
“The plan is to begin work on the infrastructure this year,” said St. Luke’s McCall Foundation Development Manager Hayley Johnson. “We expect to have at least one four-plex ready by spring of 2026.”
Public/private partnership
The project is a collaboration between the foundation and the McCall Memorial Hospital District, which so far have pledged a combined $3.5 million to the project. That includes about $2.8 million in taxpayer funding pledged by the hospital district.
The 4.8-acre parcel on which the townhomes are proposed was purchased by the hospital foundation for $965,000 last year from the school district, which sold the land to help fund construction of its own employee housing project.
The townhomes would initially be linked to Stibnite Road through a road serving the school district’s staff housing. Future phases would extend the road to connect to Mission Street.
The council voted 4-0 to approve the plans, with council member Lyle Nelson recusing himself from the discussion as a member of the St. Luke’s McCall Community Board.
“I think it’s a fantastic project and I’m excited to see it move forward,” council member Mike Maciaszek said.
A development agreement associated with the plans still must be approved by the council, though Millemann and city staff were confident final language would be agreed upon soon.
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St. Luke’s: housing impedes quality healthcare
Amber Green, chief operating and nursing officer for St. Luke’s McCall, told the council that a lack of affordable housing has long affected the hospital’s ability to provide quality healthcare.
“It has been increasingly difficult to hire and retain staff at St. Luke’s McCall,” Green said. “In the past year, we’ve seen our average time to hire new employees as high as about 160 days, which is almost five months for us to fill any one open position that we have.”
Green told Valley Lookout after the meeting that the hospital currently has 30 open positions, including 14 that have been open for more than 90 days. Overall, the hospital employs about 180 people.
In recent years the hospital has purchased existing buildings in McCall to provide employee housing, including a building at 212 N. Third St. that contains 10 apartments.
The hospital also owns two four-bedroom homes and one two-bedroom duplex near the hospital, all of which are used for short-term housing needs, like for travel workers or St. Luke’s workers from Boise who are temporarily working in McCall.
