Tavern’S Final Party May Be A Scorcher Cda Fire Department Wants To Use The Gibbs For Practice

From beer taps to ashes.

Barely three years ago, the Gibbs Tavern hosted a standing-room only eulogy for a fire-leveled sister saloon, the Fish Inn.

Now the Gibbs - the last working-class saloon on Northwest Boulevard - is about to be torched. Tonight, the Coeur d’Alene Fire Department will ask the City Council for permission to turn the tavern building into training tinder for its crews.

The practice fire likely will happen later this month, Fire Chief Richard A. Lasky said.

The bar - a railway station, restaurant and favorite watering hole among logging truck drivers in its day - is being razed to make way for an office building.

The City Council also will decide whether to push ahead with a test drinking water well on Wilbur Avenue. Last summer’s heat and Coeur d’Alene’s residential growth pushed the city to ask people to voluntarily conserve water in late July.

The city is pushing to bring another well on line by August to avoid water shortages. The Wilbur site is only the second-best choice, according to a consultant, because of its location near trichloroethylene contamination in the aquifer.

The best potential site for a new well, in the Coeur d’Alene Industrial Park, is not owned by the city. The Wilbur Avenue site is, however, making it the logical choice if the city wants to meet the August deadline.

In other business the council:

Is expected to approve the final plat for five new subdivisions and a new addition to another.

Agree to lease computer equipment from GTE for $78,689.

Purchase five police patrol vehicles from Tom Addis Lake City Ford for $103,523.

Lease 40 new personal air tanks for firefighters.

Consider a zone change on onehalf acre at the southeast corner of Neider Avenue and Government Way from residential to commercial.

Consider an appeal of a zone-change denial from J.P. Stravens Planning Associates for a parcel of land on Front Street between 21st Street and St. Thomas Cemetery. Stravens wants to change the designation from residential to commercial in order to construct a motel.

Set a Feb. 2 public hearing for Dave Smith/Frontier Leasing’s request for a “blimp” type floating sign for it’s Fourth Street car sales lot.

MEETING The Coeur d’Alene City Council meets at 6 p.m. tonight in City Hall.