The parking lot off Streams Edge Way was fuller than usual on a Tuesday evening in late July. New signage. A different logo over the door. Inside, the space that spent five years as Spring Creek Brewing Company now belongs to Gather Brewing Co., and the crowd suggested word had already traveled through the neighborhood faster than the paint had dried.
A quarter mile away, on Highway 55, the orange barrels and flaggers that have marked the road for years are finally doing something. Crews are working on the McLeod Way underpass, the project that was promised back when Avimor first got county approval for 1,700 homes in April 2021 and has been stuck in federal review ever since.
Two fixtures of daily life here just changed after years of limbo, within about eight weeks of each other. That's not really a coincidence. Both delays trace back to the same tension: a community that built homes faster than the infrastructure meant to connect them.
The New Regulars Behind the Taps
Mike and Rachel Voeller weren't looking to open a second brewery. They run Gather Brewing Co. in Universal City, Texas, a spot they built after Mike left the Coast Guard in 2018 and spent years home-brewing in their garage. Last fall, the couple visited Avimor while considering whether Idaho might be somewhere to settle their family. They stopped by Spring Creek Brewing, the original tenant in the building on Streams Edge Way, and learned it was closing after five years in business.
A few phone calls later, Gather had a second location. The Voellers relocated with their four school-aged kids, and the grand opening for Gather Brewing Company in Avimor landed on July 18, following a soft-open period that started earlier in the summer.
The menu keeps the pub standards you'd expect, burgers, pizza, a wood-fired oven inherited from the previous tenant, but adds Korean-fusion touches like spicy Korean wings and kimchi fries. For residents who want to commit early, Gather has also launched a founding-member program called The Gather Foundry: a one-time payment that includes a free drink every day for life and a name etched on a mug displayed at the brewery.
What stood out in the Voellers' own account of the decision wasn't the beer. It was the layout of the community itself.
"It is rare to find a place that blends outdoor access, walkability, and a real sense of family-friendly community the way Avimor does."
That word, walkability, is worth sitting with, because it's the exact thing the highway on the other side of the parking lot has been getting in the way of.
The Longer Wait
While Gather's opening took about ten months from first visit to grand opening, the underpass took five years and change. The timeline matters, because it explains why residents on one side of Highway 55 have spent years treating a left turn as a small act of faith.
- April 2021: Boise County approves Avimor's plan for 1,700 homes, with the crossing under Highway 55 promised as part of the deal.
- 2022: A stock pond near the proposed underpass site, built by the McLeod family decades ago to water cattle, becomes the center of a federal wetlands review.
- January 2024: The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers sends notice of an investigation into whether construction near the pond could send material into an unnamed tributary of Spring Valley Creek.
- December 19, 2025: The Army Corps sends a letter signaling the investigation is closed, clearing the way for state permitting.
- February 2026: The Idaho Department of Environmental Quality opens a public comment period on the draft water quality certification for the project, running through February 26.
- Now through October 2026: Construction on the underpass and the connecting roadway, McLeod Way, a 36-foot road with a 10-foot shared-use path, is underway with a target completion this fall.
As of spring 2025, Avimor had already built roughly 900 homes, all of them on the east side of the highway, according to developer estimates cited in local reporting. The crossing meant to link the two sides was still years from breaking ground.
Developer Brad Pfannmuller has been blunt about what that gap actually meant day to day. Describing the turn lanes residents use to pull onto Highway 55 while waiting for the underpass, he told BoiseDev:
"If someone is killed turning out on a holiday weekend because they're trying to pull out in front of a semi, then that's on their hands."
That's not a quote about zoning. It's a quote about the specific left turn a lot of Avimor residents make on their way to Eagle or Boise most days.
The Same Root, Two Timelines
Set the brewery story next to the underpass story and a pattern shows up. Avimor grew at the pace a master-planned community grows: homes first, amenities close behind, connective infrastructure lagging furthest. Commercial tenants clustered near the existing crossing because that's where the traffic already was. When Spring Creek closed, Gather moved into the same spot for the same reason the Voellers cited: walkability, but walkability that has, until now, only worked on one side of the highway.
The underpass was never a nice-to-have. It's the piece that turns two halves of a neighborhood connected by a stoplight and a prayer into a place someone can actually walk or bike between, the way the original 2021 plans described.
| Through most of 2026 | After the fall 2026 completion target | |
|---|---|---|
| Crossing Highway 55 | Signal at Avimor Drive and McLeod Way turn lanes | Underpass connects both sides without crossing highway traffic |
| Commercial cluster | Concentrated near the east-side entrance | Positioned to serve residents on both sides |
| Longer-term highway plan | Two-lane stretch, at-grade signal | Separate 7-year bypass project proposes roundabouts in place of the current signal, per ITD |
That last row is worth flagging so nobody confuses the two projects. The McLeod Way underpass finishing this fall is a near-term fix. A separate, larger bypass around Avimor, with roundabouts replacing the current traffic light, is a longer-horizon project that, as of mid-2025, the developer estimated could take roughly seven years to complete. One is finishing this fall. The other is still on the drawing board.
What It Actually Looks Like This Fall
If you're driving Highway 55 through Avimor between now and October, expect the same flaggers and lane shifts that have marked the corridor for months, now doing the work of finishing McLeod Way rather than waiting on permits. Hyde Perk Coffee, still tucked near the Community Center on Avimor Drive, remains reachable the same way it always has. So does the Community Center itself, with its indoor pool and fitness center, and Foothills Heritage Park, whose amphitheater keeps hosting the concerts and events that have run there for years under the community's Art of Living program.
Gather's patio is open for the crowds it's been drawing since the grand opening, and if the McLeod Way timeline holds, this could be the last full season anyone here has to think about which side of Highway 55 they're currently on before deciding where to grab dinner.
For a neighborhood that's spent years being described in brochures as connected, the connecting part is finally catching up. If you're weighing what a home in Avimor or elsewhere in Eagle actually looks like on the ground, not just on a site plan, Heather Ferguson Realty Group knows this stretch of Highway 55 well enough to walk you through what's finished, what's still under construction, and what that means for daily life here. Reach out whenever you're ready to talk specifics.
