Weather Chased Business Indoors Downtown Cda Merchants Had Poor Weekend

The visitors came. The visitors shopped.

They just didn’t do it in downtown Coeur d’Alene.

Shoppers were out in force this weekend, but flocking only, it seemed, to places they could stay inside for awhile.

As a gray Memorial Day weekend drew to a close Monday, Sherman Avenue merchants said their traditional kick-off to summer retailing proved as disappointing as the weather.

Rain and an empty Lake Coeur d’Alene kept buyers to a minimum along the pedestrian-friendly shopping plaza Saturday and Sunday. Monday’s dry-yet-cloudy weather offered only a marginal improvement.

Traffic at the Shred Shed snowboard and skateboard shop was “nearly dead,” the manager said. Business was equally slow down the street at The Bookseller.

“In comparison to kind of the usual Memorial Day, it was a lot slower,” said Alisa Proctor, owner of the One of A Kind store downtown. “I think a lot of people just chose to stay home.”

Yet while downtown merchants cursed Mother Nature, central Coeur d’Alene and Spokane stores were singing its praises.

“The rain has been a godsend; we’ve needed this,” said Lin Dawkins, assistant manager of the Book & Game Company in the Silver Lake Mall. “Yesterday (Sunday) we did twice what we did the year before and Saturday we did almost twice.”

Dreams of sunnier weather also kept the dressing rooms filled at Swim In! in Spokane’s Northtown Mall.

“We’re just slammed right now,” said Autumn Klassen, a saleswoman. “The weather is so bad, everybody is just shopping for a swimsuit instead.”

At the Children’s Corner Bookshop in downtown Spokane, teachers, parents and kids browsed the afternoon away and kept clerks busy ringing up sales.

“Half those lake cabins are under water, right?” said bookseller Jennifer Olson, speculating on why the crowd was larger than usual.

Only when it came time for meals did visitors and locals return to Idaho’s shoreline in great numbers, merchants and restaurateurs said.

“I think people thought, ‘It’s a holiday, therefore we must at least go to the lake,”’ said Rick Powers, director of food and beverage for the Coeur d’Alene Resort, where eateries were busy all weekend long. “They didn’t do much boating, but they ate a lot.”

At Tito Macaroni’s, business was up 20 percent over last year - despite the fact that rain kept down attendance at community events like Saturday’s Memorial Day Parade down.

Of course, weather may not have been responsible for everything, Powers said. He believes Tito’s also profited from Sunday’s Coeur d’Alene Marathon, an event that drew more than 1,000 runners.

“Being an Italian restaurant, a pasta restaurant, and everybody having that carbo-load thing on their mind … well, we were busy,” he said.

, DataTimes The following fields overflowed: BYLINE = Craig Welch Staff writer Staff writer Jeanette White contributed to this report.