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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Becky Kramer

This individual is no longer an employee with The Spokesman-Review.

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News >  Idaho

Luxury golf community in the works

Another gated golf community – this one with architecture themed after famous French castles – is coming to the shores of Lake Coeur d'Alene. A Las Vegas development firm has submitted plans for the $150 million Chateau De Loire Golf and Lake Club, an 18-hole golf course and 475 luxury homes and condos overlooking Moscow Bay.
News >  Idaho

Silver Valley yielding new commodity: homes

In a sign of the Silver Valley's rising fortunes, Realtors are preparing to sell lots in the first new subdivision platted in the historic mining district in nearly 30 years. Eight people are lined up to build $300,000 to $500,000 homes in Silver Meadows at Frost Point, near the city of Pinehurst. Faux farmhouses, Northwest lodges and Craftsman revival-inspired homes will spring up on half-acre lots overlooking the Pinehurst Golf Course. By mid-June, the first 50 parcels should be ready for sale.
News >  Idaho

Garden Avenue may bloom

COEUR d'ALENE – Old-fashioned lamp posts and perennial flower beds could spring up on Garden Avenue to spruce up the neighborhood and increase pedestrian traffic on the street. Garden is one of the few east-west thoroughfares downtown. Planning consultants have identified it as a critical traffic corridor, with the potential to link older residential neighborhoods to North Idaho College and beach access.

News >  Business

Floating new ideas

SPOKANE VALLEY – Scott Kurtz shows up for work these days in baggy pants and a paint-spattered sweater. He's dressed for his new job as owner of a boat storage and repair business. Kurtz might spend the day sanding blisters from a fiberglass hull, or designing an extended swim platform for a Bayliner. The job requires the same problem-solving skills he honed as a metallurgical engineer at Kaiser Aluminum Corp., but the feedback is quicker.

Investors buy B.C. ski resort

A Sandpoint company hopes to turn a tiny, money-losing ski resort in British Columbia's Okanogan region into a successful, four-season "boutique" resort. The Mount Baldy Ski Area attracted a mere 20,000 skier visits this season – about one-tenth of the volume of a ski area like Schweitzer Mountain Resort.
News >  Idaho

Kootenai’s 4 percent growth rate state’s highest

Kootenai County was Idaho's fastest growing county last year, with a population gain of 4 percent. The county ended 2004 with 122,350 residents, according to U.S. Census figures scheduled to be released today. Second place went to Canyon County in southwest Idaho, where the population grew by slightly less than 4 percent.
News >  Business

Wal-Mart considers store in Silver Valley

Wal-Mart may be coming to Smelterville, a blink-of-the-eye community along Interstate 90 in Idaho's Silver Valley. Eric Berger, a spokesman for the Bentonville, Ark.-based retailer, confirmed Wednesday that Wal-Mart officials are considering purchasing land near the freeway's Smelterville exit. The property lies just outside the limits of the city of 650. The land is already zoned for commercial development.
News >  Idaho

Mountains get fresh layer of skiers

KELLOGG – Lori McClintock was planning to spend this weekend sprucing up her camper for the summer season. Instead, she pulled her skis out of the attic. Storms dropped 4 to 6 feet of new snow in the mountains over the past seven days. The thought of all that fresh powder was a siren call to McClintock, a season-pass holder at Silver Mountain.
News >  Idaho

Company says Rock Creek will prevail

A Montana judge's ruling this week quashed Bill Orchow's plans to start hiring this summer at the Rock Creek Mine. But Orchow, president of Revett Silver Co., says he's still confident the company will prevail in a multiyear battle to extract copper and silver from beneath the Cabinet Mountains Wilderness. U.S. District Judge Donald Malloy ruled this week that the federal government failed to acknowledge the risk the mine would pose to endangered grizzly bears and bull trout.
News >  Idaho

Mine faces big setback

A proposal to tunnel a mine under a northwest Montana wilderness area may have been dealt a mortal blow by a recent court decision, according to opponents of the mine. The federal government was wrong in saying the Rock Creek Mine would pose "no jeopardy" to protected Cabinet Mountain grizzly bears and bull trout populations, according to the ruling issued Monday by U.S. District Judge Donald Malloy, of Missoula.
News >  Idaho

Schools’ shutdown troubles community

BONNERS FERRY, Idaho – Employees of CEDU Educational Services' three schools in Boundary County filled out unemployment forms in droves Monday while a straggling handful of students packed their things to leave Idaho. Brown Schools Inc., CEDU's parent corporation, filed for bankruptcy Friday, the same day employees learned they were losing their jobs. About 300 people in North Idaho are out of work, and about 300 students in CEDU's seven schools across the country were abruptly sent home.
News >  Idaho

CdA sees jobs boom

Kootenai County's job market grew at a record pace last year, snagging a fourth-place finish in a ranking of 416 metropolitan areas. The number of new jobs created in the county grew by 6.8 percent in 2004. The construction industry alone added nearly 800 workers. Employers were also hiring in factories, schools, health-care facilities, call centers, government offices and retail stores.
News >  Business

Alternative energy

SANDPOINT – Inspiration often strikes college students after midnight. It hit Zach Hagadone and Chris De Cleur in the wee hours of the morning, when the two pals were putting together the next day's edition of the Coyote, Albertson College's student newspaper. "Three of us were in the Coyote's office," Hagadone said. "We had some criticisms of the (Idaho) Statesman, and we had all just read a book called 'The Chain Gang.'"
News >  Business

Regional expressions

SANDPOINT – Gretchen Kinne knows "Sandpoint Style" when she sees it. If a house has a certain modest elegance, a cleanness of line enhanced by native wood and rock; windows situated to let in natural light, and a location featuring the sound of train whistles, then the house has "Sandpoint Style," in Kinne's view.
News >  Business

Buck Knives finds success through ‘lean manufacturing’

POST FALLS – About five years ago, CJ Buck picked up a fishing knife made in Taiwan, tested its blade and studied its craftsmanship. In spite of himself, the fourth-generation knife maker was impressed. Buck is president and chief executive officer of Buck Knives Inc., a privately held family firm whose products enjoy iconic status with hunters and fishermen, a clientele loyal to "Made in USA" labels.
News >  Idaho

Snow just in time for seminar

KELLOGG – Silver Mountain whitened up just in time for a visit from 175 ski journalists. Wednesday night's storm dropped a foot of new snow on the mountain, magically erasing the dreary brown spots that had emerged in recent weeks. When members of the North American Snowsports Journalists Association hit the slopes Thursday, they were gliding on fresh powder.
News >  Business

Kootenai County home prices soaring

Kootenai County home prices moved into record territory in February, with the average sales price eclipsing $183,000. Realtors predict that the run-up in prices will last through the summer months.
News >  Business

Chesrown set to begin RiverWalk construction

Developer Marshall Chesrown plans to start construction this spring on 412 new homes, condos and lofts along the Spokane River. The RiverWalk project will have architectural echoes of The Club at Black Rock, Chesrown's luxury golf resort on Lake Coeur d'Alene. But the audience is more eclectic.
News >  Business

Dover housing development approved

A Sandpoint developer has won approval to build more than 500 new homes along the Pend Oreille River, transforming Dover, Idaho, from a sleepy little town into a resort area. The Dover Bay project will create housing, parks, trails and dedicated open space on 285 acres along the river. Developer Ralph Sletager could not be reached for comment Friday afternoon.
News >  Business

Potlatch idea tested by fire

Wildfires that blazed across the West in recent years are the inspiration for Potlatch Corp.'s newest product — fire-resistant cedar decking. The Spokane company is betting that homeowners who spend millions of dollars on luxury homes at the forests' edge will invest in flame-resistant decking as well.
News >  Business

First-time home buyers get break

COEUR d'ALENE – First-time home buyers in Kootenai and Bonner counties can now buy houses priced up to $200,000 and still qualify for discounted interest rates aimed at helping low- and moderate-income families achieve homeownership. "Our limit up there used to be $150,000, which just wasn't cutting it," said Reed Hollinshead, spokesman for the Idaho Housing and Finance Association. "Bumping it up to $200,000 opens the gate a little wider."
News >  Business

Feeding a big appetite

POST FALLS – Most local residents will get a regular taste of Sysco Food Services, even though the region's newest food warehouse isn't open to the public. The warehouse will act as a grocer to area restaurants, hospitals, schools and nursing homes.
News >  Spokane

Developer offers Stimson mill swap

Stalled plans for a higher education corridor along the Spokane River leaped ahead Monday with developer Marshall Chesrown's announcement that he has a working agreement to purchase Stimson Lumber Co.'s two waterfront mills. In a deal brokered by Chesrown, the two sawmills and their 200 employees would be relocated to Hauser, Idaho, to a state-of-the-art facility that Chesrown would build. Then he would swap the new mill for Stimson's 80 acres along the Spokane River.
News >  Spokane

‘The unsung heroes’

SANDPOINT – "Don't be alarmed," says Mike Joseph, the grooming supervisor at Schweitzer Mountain Resort. Seconds later, his 18,000-pound snowcat is lumbering down a 36-degree slope, the sheer descent slowed by a winch tethered to a pole at the top.
News >  Business

In the black

COEUR d'ALENE – Bob Palm would like to keep that used printer cartridge out of the landfill, and make a few bucks, too. The goals are twin pursuits of Palm's business, Rapid Refill Ink. Five days a week, Palm stops at the company's 30-plus drop boxes in North Idaho, where people drop off used cartridges from their printers, copiers and fax machines. Within 48 hours, they're refilled with ink and ready for pickup.