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Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883
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Becky Kramer

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News >  Business

Counting on Canada

As an escalator whisked Marlene Dreher toward Nordstrom's third floor, she flung out her arm and cried "Focus, girls, focus!" Her two daughters and a daughter-in-law – momentarily sidetracked by a display of dress boots a floor below – fell into step. The women, all Canadians, were on a carefully scripted shopping trip to Spokane. In four days, they planned to hit up to 100 stores. It fell to Dreher, a twinkly-eyed grandma, to get the troops to their first agreed upon stop: Nordstrom's children's department.
News >  Business

Sandpoint to gain retail, office complex

A retail and office complex covering more than four acres and featuring a new financial center is planned for southwest Sandpoint. Ron Robinson owns the land and is developing the project, which includes a three-story, 18,388-square-foot building that will be anchored by Mountain West Financial Center.
News >  Business

The game has changed

WORLEY, Idaho – David LaSarte-Meeks always had a hankering to return to his roots on the Coeur d'Alene Indian Reservation, but job offers usually pulled him away. He worked as an engineer in Washington, D.C.; as executive director of the Arizona Indian Gaming Association in Phoenix; and as an attorney in Seattle.
News >  Spokane

UI researcher angling for fish vaccine

Rainbow trout might be native to Northwest streams, but chefs all over the world revere the fish's firm, mild-tasting flesh. Thanks to aquaculture, fresh trout appears on menus from Tokyo to Tehran. "In Japan, it sells quite well against the sockeye salmon," said Jim Parsons, senior vice president of Troutlodge Inc. in Sumner, Wash. His company ships rainbow trout eggs for cultivation to 45 countries, including Iran.
News >  Idaho

Cabela’s near deal with Post Falls

Post Falls appears to have hooked Cabela's. After months of playing coy, company officials confirmed that final negotiations are under way for a mega sporting goods store that could open by fall 2007.
News >  Business

Unkind cuts ahead for sawmills

Expect more shakeout in the wood products industry, Potlatch CEO Mike Covey warned analysts during a conference call on Tuesday. North American mills are geared up to produce 65 billion board feet of lumber – enough to build 2.2 million houses. With residential construction projected to fall by 20 percent next year, demand for lumber will continue to fall off sharply, and that will lead to more layoffs, Covey predicted.
News >  Business

Galena miners will be stockholders

Stock awards — best known as perks given to top managers — are coming to hourly employees at the Galena silver mine. A new contract signed by the Steelworkers and the mine's owners makes employees eligible for 50 shares of company stock for each month they work.
News >  Business

Biopol to consolidate operations in Idaho

A Spokane company that puts the sneezing-scratching-wheezing agents into allergy shots plans to consolidate its operations in Idaho. Biopol Laboratory Inc. has purchased 12 ½ acres in the Riverbend Commerce Park in Post Falls, where it plans to open a new facility in late 2008 or early 2009.
News >  Business

Life Care Centers to expand

Life Care Centers of America will break ground Friday on a $40 million campus in Post Falls. The facility will be the second in Kootenai County for the Tennessee-based firm, which is one of the nation's largest providers of nursing home and assisted living facilities.
News >  Idaho

Hunters drop big bucks

ST. MARIES – It's 5:30 a.m., and Chuck Petersen is in a hurry to get to a certain little swamp in the St. Joe River basin. When the sun clears the foothills of the Bitterroots, Petersen will be waiting – rifle in hand – for the deer to start stirring. If luck is with him, the hunter from Calder, Idaho, will bag a buck.
News >  Idaho

Fleeced flock wants money back

An itinerant preacher from Post Falls used his status as a man of God to swindle investors out of $100,000, according to the Idaho Department of Finance. Michael R. Shaw visited evangelical congregations all over the country, encouraging the pastors and parishioners to invest in "Shattered Dreams and Broken Hearts," a book he purportedly wrote in the mid-1990s and planned to re-release. More than 20 people ponied up cash, lured by promises of a fourfold return within 12 months.
News >  Business

Vaagen buys Usk sawmill

Vaagen Bros. Lumber Inc. has purchased a competing sawmill in Usk, Wash., a move that will help both mills weather a period of low lumber prices, the companies' officials said Tuesday. Ponderay Valley Fibre Inc. sold to Vaagen Bros. in early October. Though the parties declined to discuss the purchase price, citing confidentiality agreements, county records listed the sale of the mill and additional acreage at $20.4 million.
News >  Idaho

Treat helping to clean river

PRICHARD, Idaho – Three years ago, two neighbors found themselves commiserating about trash along the banks of the North Fork of the Coeur d'Alene River. Peg Hammeren was disgusted by the broken bottles and cans she found in the blue-ribbon trout stream, which draws anglers and rafters from all over the Inland Northwest. Her friend Terrann Tester, a fire prevention technician for the U.S. Forest Service, told her about finding abandoned campfires on the shore, smoldering with wet garbage.
News >  Idaho

Bears, mine can coexist, feds say

Federal authorities have given a green light to a controversial mine in the Cabinet Mountains of Montana, saying a struggling grizzly population of 10 to 15 bears will be protected from the mine's negative impacts through extensive mitigation. On Friday, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service issued a "non-jeopardy" biological opinion for the Rock Creek Mine proposed by Revett Silver Co. of Spokane Valley.
News >  Business

Home improvement gets cheaper

New bargains appear almost daily in the lumber and plywood aisles of local hardware stores. Prices are dropping so rapidly for some items that consumers can find multiple markdowns in the same week.
News >  Business

Displaced from home

BAYVIEW, Idaho – In her empty living room, Barbara Weekly reminisced about how 44 Christmas carolers once squeezed into her modest mobile home. "We were wall-to-wall, everybody holding a bowl of soup, if you can imagine," said Weekly. The hospitable 65-year-old also has fond memories of seating 30 for family dinners, and hosting grandchildren's sleepovers.
News >  Idaho

Kohl’s plans store for CdA

Kohl's, a fast-growing Midwestern department store chain, is planning to build a store in Coeur d'Alene north of Silver Lake Mall. Kohl's sells mid-priced apparel and household items, competing with retailers such as JC Penney, Target and Macy's. The Menomonee, Wis., company is in the midst of rapid expansion, with plans to open 80 to 85 stores this year. One of its target growth areas is the Northwest.
News >  Idaho

Elmira booms again

ELMIRA, Idaho – Nearly 100 years after Elmira's brief fling as a western boom town, the clatter of construction echoes through the nearby forest. Sandpoint developer Kent Compton bought this bit of Idaho history earlier this year. He plans to turn Elmira's original town site into a development of period-style homes starting in the $152,000 range.
News >  Idaho

Potlatch decides no more free rides

Forty-five minutes from his home amid the wheat fields of the Palouse, Steve Broemeling can lose himself in trees. For nearly 30 years, he's ridden his motorcycle over remote trails that stretch deep into the forested interior of north-central Idaho. Sometimes, Broemeling's wife rides with him. Sometimes, he takes his 16-year-old son, the family dog and two fishing rods. "You can ride for days," said Broemeling, a 47-year-old resident of Genesee, Idaho.
News >  Idaho

Old dump raises new worries at Riverstone

Officials from Panhandle Health District and the city of Coeur d'Alene will meet with developer John Stone today to sort out whether wood waste is being properly disposed of at a former gravel quarry along the Spokane River in Coeur d'Alene. Stone's firm, SRM Development of Spokane, is reclaiming the 80-acre site for a public park, housing and retail shops. During the excavation work, the company discovered an old dump site containing tree stumps and other woody debris.
News >  Business

Taking point on timber trade

Dick Bennett is talking about how cheap lumber imports from Canada are stripping profits from his family-owned sawmill in Grangeville, Idaho. This isn't a fist-pounding conversation. But he's passionate enough that it could be.
News >  Business

Fuel for growth

Rising natural gas prices are pumping up sales at the Atlas Pellet plant, a Coeur d'Alene company that turns sawdust into fuel. Sawdust is dried and compressed at the plant, becoming sweet-smelling pellets burned in stoves and furnaces. The pellets sell under the names "Northwest Pride," a mix of Douglas fir and pine sawdust, and "Atlas," which is 100 percent fir.
News >  Business

Coldwater Creek sues over handbags

Call it the showdown over handbags: A Beverly Hills firm fired off a letter to Coldwater Creek last month, accusing the Sandpoint-based retailer of producing inexpensive knockoffs of its chi chi leather handbags. Brighton Collectibles Inc. designs and sells purses, wallets and iPod covers, some with price tags of $300 or more. The firm's product's have a distinctive style, according to the letter sent by Brighton's attorney, characterized by costly leather, brocaded fabrics, filigreed metal parts, and the "prominent use of a heart emblem."
News >  Idaho

Riverstone developer foresees big future

Within five years, an old mill site in Coeur d'Alene could support a population of 2,500 people on a landscape that developer John Stone calls "a town within a town." Theoretically, the residents of the Riverstone development could find everything they want and need within the 160 acres.
News >  Business

Sportsman’s Warehouse to build in CdA

Sportsman's Warehouse, which competes with Cabela's for sales of outdoor gear, is building a store in Coeur d'Alene. The 49,000-square-foot store is slated to open in May. It will employ about 65 people. The fast-growing chain also operates a store at the Spokane Valley Mall and is considering building another on Spokane's North Side, said Stu Utgaard, chairman and CEO of the Salt Lake City-based company.