Ziggy’s Gets A Jump On Bigger Competitors With New Post Falls Store

While other “new” home improvement stores in Kootenai County are just blueprints or scraped dirt following plenty of big headlines, Ziggy’s is quietly opening its eighth new store in the Inland Northwest.

With a new building of 45,000 square feet on Highway 41 just north of Interstate 90, Ziegler Building Center, better known as Ziggy’s, has come to the Post Falls area.

Offering competitive prices, Ziggy’s specializes in large selections of building supplies, carpet and landscape materials.

Post Falls’ manager of about 25 employees is Vern Pettet, who transferred from the North Pointe store in Spokane. Owner Vern Ziegler started the company in Spokane in 1965.

The new store officially will open Sunday, with regular hours of 8 a.m. to 7 p.m. weekdays, 8 to 5:50 Saturdays and 9 to 5 Sundays. Phone 777-1955.

Another major retailer, Albertson’s, is coming to the same area of Post Falls. First, however, a long-established employer will move to make room for the mega market.

Northern Beverage, now located behind the new Kentucky Fried Chicken south of the Seltice Way-Ross Point Road intersection, is building a 25,000-square-foot office-warehouse-loading facility at 250 W. Anton in Coeur d’Alene.

The location - almost hidden, but still in the middle of everything - is west from Les Schwab Tire on Government Way and set off a spur of Anton Avenue.

The result of a merger of three beverage distribution companies, Northern Beverage primarily distributes Coors and Strohs beer products and a number of wines, micro beers and import beers. The company and its 24 employees will move to Coeur d’Alene late this year. The Post Falls property will turn over to Albertson’s next March.

Northern Beverage is owned by Roger Johnson and Dale Scarlett, Nebraska and California natives respectively, who came to North Idaho in 1979.

After three years in its independent location in central Coeur d’Alene, Lewis-Clark State College will return its northern office to “college row” in mid-August.

Hoping to utilize shared facilities, LCSC will move a 3,000-square-foot modular unit to a site adjacent to a remodeled 868-square-foot house-turned-office at 715 River Ave. A breezeway will connect the buildings, which will include offices, a classroom, computer lab and a student lounge.

The move affords a pleasant building with adequate parking in a residential neighborhood and allows LCSC students and staff a “better position to coordinate” with North Idaho College and the University of Idaho’s Coeur d’Alene facility, said LCSC Director Rodney Frey. LCSC left the NIC campus for its independent facility three years ago.

Some 325 junior and senior students - about one-fifth of the LCSC student body - are administered through the Coeur d’Alene branch. LCSC has had a facility in Coeur d’Alene for 10 years. Frey said he expects LCSC will construct a permanent building on the River Avenue location.

Another “Idaho-only” concern, Idaho Independent Bank, has expanded to occupy the upper floor and most of the street level space in the main building at Lochaven Square in Hayden. The move gives IIB 1,950 square feet on the main level and 9,100 upstairs.

In its four years of existence, the bank has grown from 14 employees in its original Lochaven area to about 60 employees in three locations, the others being on Northwest Boulevard in Coeur d’Alene in 1994 and in Boise in 1996.

IIB President Jack Gustavel said the bank’s success partially is a result of a disruption in the banking system because of numerous mergers and acquisitions of other banks.

“Mergers like that take new forms and people feel like they aren’t getting personal service,” Gustavel said. “People like a hometown bank’s personal service. We do all the big banks do, only better.”

Tidbits:

Friday is “Shop North Idaho Day.”

According to Idaho Sen. Gordon Crow, Kootenai County easily has the state’s oldest average-age population and continually adds to it. (Now additional birthdays make me more nervous.) Crow also says Kootenai County is the state’s fastest growing in population per capita.

, DataTimes The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = Nils Rosdahl The Spokesman-Review