Traffic Growth Opens Door For New Coeur D’Alene Auto Lube Business

(From Rosdahl column, September 10, 1997): Correction: A reader pointed out that I was mistaken last week and the bike-lane bottleneck has not been remedied at Coeur d’Alene High School. Despite bike lanes leading to the school from almost all directions, the Fourth Street curve doesn’t allow room for bikes. Pity that planning for the new construction didn’t provide bike-lane room, despite ample space.

While some may call it “jumping on the bandwagon,” to many it’s simply smart business to take advantage of an opportunity.

That’s what brothers John and Wally Adams are doing as they add two service bays and the words “Quick Lube” to their sign at 1112 W. Appleway in Coeur d’Alene. The sign now reads “Appleway Car Wash & Quick Lube.”

West Appleway has been a quiet extension westward from one of the busiest intersections in the state - Appleway and Highway 95. The traffic count on that piece of road will soon change, however.

Eagle Hardware & Garden is constructing its huge, new store across the street. Central location and accessibility are major reasons for the Eagle location despite competition from other major hardware and building supply stores.

Coeur d’Alene’s major residential expansion is to the northwest, almost the only area where there’s room, and this location puts Eagle right on the way home for many.

The planned new intersection of I-90 with the Northwest Boulevard-Ramsey Road corridor, leading to the northwest area, can only help.

So, of course, the wise Adams brothers looked at this development and their available property and considered what would work best there.

The answer, with their car wash already established, is a lube business. Customers can leave their vehicles at the lube bays while they pick up hardware items.

With five employees, Appleway Lube plans to open in November, with either Quaker State or Pennzoil as the oil brand name for the business.

Next year will be the 50th for the Adams family in Coeur d’Alene. Jack Adams, now 86, started Coeur d’Alene Tractor in 1948 and stills comes to work daily. His sons essentially run the Coeur d’Alene store. His great-grandson, Cal Russell, is the family’s fourth generation in the business, working for the family’s second store, Boundary Tractor & Yamaha, in Bonners Ferry.

Coeur d’Alene’s reputation as an antique center took a positive turn as Cisco’s added a high visibility downtown location.

The 4,000-square-foot Cisco’s II, at 317 Sherman Ave. - formerly the Great Escape - joins the first Cisco’s store at 212 N. Fourth St.

A look at the inventory at both stores supports the stores’ slogan: “Hunters of the past specializing in the rare and exceptional.”

The Cisco’s stores are like museums. They include fine furniture, country furnishings and accessories, Western and Native American items, taxidermy, and hunting, fishing and nautical items.

Walls and counter tops feature art of many types - fine art, folk art, “trench” art and “tramp” art.

Trench art, owner Sam Kennedy explained, includes things like gun shells made into metal items, possibly by soldiers in the trenches or “natives” who found the casings. Tramp art includes things such as carved, multilayered cigar boxes, he said.

Sam and his wife, Denise, were Iowans who didn’t like Iowa, he said. They came to Coeur d’Alene in July last year after several people who visited their Iowa store suggested they come this way.

Sam said that they’ve been so busy that they haven’t had time to reflect on their move west.

“In the Midwest, people from a 500-mile radius knew about us,” he said. “Here we’re gaining, but we’re just being discovered.”

Some tidbits:

Tubs Coffee House & Beer Garden, at 313 Coeur d’Alene Lake Drive, is adding a full-service kitchen and expanding its seating capacity.

New to the homey place will be an early-morning breakfast and a rotating menu for lunch and dinner. Owners Tom and Kelly Sullivan opened the coffee house in June 1996 and added the beer garden with live entertainment this summer.

Yes, tourists especially have inquired whether any of the reportedly tainted meat of the infamous Hudson Meat Co. is used in the Lake City’s famous Hudson Hamburgers. No way, exclaims Papa Roger Hudson.

After a year of closure for construction, Thompson Pass from Murray to Thompson Falls is now open after 6 p.m. and on weekends. The upper detour is very rough and steep, and the road now glides past, instead of through, Murray. The mine-dredged stones in the creek bed are being crushed as the valley regains its original look.

After being a bottleneck for bicycles and pedestrians for several years, Coeur d’Alene High School’s new wide access finally can gather these travelers without forcing them into the street or ditch. And watch for Neider Avenue to extend east from Government Way to Fourth Street, probably next year.

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