Boise TechMall

I like the restaurant but what a silly mistake to put it facing away from the road and on the second floor. Waste of a nice place and money.

I was fortunate enough to be afforded a private tour of Boise TechMall prior to their grand opening.
I found myself thinking: I can’t believe this is in Boise!
I found myself saying: That’s so cool!
A lot.
(I really need to find more phrases to express awe and fascination. Seriously.)
That said, Boise TechMall is really just so very… cool.
The first floor is designed to be a sort of high-​tech trade show experience. The highlights for me were:
3D printer. While I was there, it was printing intricate chess pieces. The detail was astounding. Serious whoa factor.
Evengreen Technology has an interactive display. It wasn’t in place while I was there, but was under construction and the vision was explained to me. The coolest part of the display is that there will be a way to use their solar calculator tool. If you haven’t done this, you need to. I was astounded at how affordable solar technology is today. Basically, by providing your address and current monthly power costs – they will estimate how much solar installation will cost you. For my home, the cost of the payment to finance solar wasn’t any more than our current power costs! Serious wow factor.
The second floor is their Innovative Design Center (website creation, graphic design, app development, SEO implementation) and is home to the Boise TechCafe and The HotSpot.
The TechCafe has a full coffee bar in addition to café food. It would be easy to overlook the café by assuming the usual coffee house ho-​hum eats. I don’t think that is the case here. Word on the street is that the chef at the TechCafe is seriously legit. The coffee bar slings Caffe D’arte coffee (nice!). And, there’s plenty of space for you to work with outlets situated where you sit. No crawling under tables, over feet, and and around table legs in search of an outlet. This is a TECH café. It caters to the laptop toting among you. You know who you are. This, my friends, is your oasis of productivity.
The HotSpot is home to Boise’s first ever automated beer wall. I feel as though no other words are necessary here. Automated. Beer. Wall.
Also on the 2^nd floor is The Viewfinder which offers professional photography and videography They have a great little studio with walls and door lined with sound proofing foam in order to do videography onsite.
The third floor is their Business Solution Center. They have everything an entrepreneur would possibly need to turn the vision for their business into a reality. They have business planning services, certified accountants, attorney services, financial services, and marketing development. Plus, a pretty sweet training/​conference center.
I could go on and on – but, really, you just need to go check it out!
Did I mention the automated beer wall?
Get to it!

The café on the second floor of this three floor building has been open in «soft» mode for a couple of weeks. But it and the entire building will have GRAND OPENING ON WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 21, with ribbon cutting about 4:30. So heads up, if you haven’t yet been to the TechMall to check it out, that would be a very good time to go.
My husband and I had a chance for personal tour of all three floors of the building and while it may be too early to say «five stars» given this butterfly is just starting to emerge, it sure is hard to say anything but «woohoo» for the chutzpah that led to this vision and the tenacity of three men, including the principal in the mix who owns a Boise computer buisness, that made this happen.
THE CONCEPT:
The basic idea is to cluster smaller tech businesses and those with a vision for same under the same roof to nurture those in early stages and beyond. I guess that is in the theory of a rising tide raising all boats.
Even for we whose working days in technology businesses are now in our rear view mirror, like my husband and me, this was a pretty fun place to tour and wish we were thirty years younger to participate.
THE CAFE:
It was also a darned good place to share a good pizza and enjoy an excellent Americano in the second floor café while using their 1000mb free wifi to get some work done in between vendor meetings for a home building project. (Not a typo… one thousand.) They have seating in two areas; in the dining area and in a bar that will have a beer ‘vending machine’ wall as well as wine and, no kidding, Oxygen service. (For the latter, just emerging as ‘cool’ when I was still working a million years ago, is it still?)
THE BUILDING SET UP:
1^st floor — a showroom that will highlight vendors if exisiting products and new inventions
2^nd floor — café with good food (sandwiches, wraps, salads, pizza), excellent coffee, top notch service (order at counter it is delivered to your table) and lightening fast wifi. (The fastest in the Treasure Valley outside of Micron’s building we hear.)
3^rd floor — Includes a conference room (which I hear will be free to use) and offices for up and running businesses (like a web site development company) as well as marketing, legal and financial experts who are available as resource for fledging busineses.
Butterfly emerged from crysalis, it will be good to see how it can fly. There is good karma in this. We wish them all the best.
THIS N THAT:
1) PARKING: In lot.
2) ACCESSIBILITY: Accessible parking outside door. Level in and throughout. Elevators between floors. Café has standard height seating as well as high seating.
3) BUSINESS CARDS: There is a big display in the lobby where one can, after checking in with the TechMall’s marketing director on the third floor, put cards for one’s business. Similarly, one can pick up the cards here for other companies. It made me smile to realize business cards survive through every level of advancing technology!
4) NETWORKING MEETINGS: Take place on Wednesday evenings, either once a month or weekly. Check in with the info desk on the first floor or the marketing office on the third for more information.