The Mceuen Field Battles Latest Proposal For Downtown Has Long Legacy Of Opposition
It was a seemingly savvy business decision: Purchase the old Coeur d’Alene Mill site near the lake for $19,000 and turn it into a Depression-era power plant for city residents.
Two decades later, a Spokane developer pitched a shopping mall for a lakefront corner of the mostly unused land, the supposed elixir for a depressed downtown.
City voters objected by a 2-1 ratio that year - 1956.
So began the history of McEuen Field and Tubbs Hill, the Lake City’s most coveted real estate in the eyes of developers, ball players, picnickers and nearly everyone who has strolled the cityside shores of Lake Coeur d’Alene. In the decades of serendipity and sweat that brought together this 135-acre prize, controversy has been the only constant.
That controversy returns this week as the city kicks off another effort to redesign downtown parks and open space - again in the name of resuscitating downtown’s retail district. It is being met with wariness, decades deep.
Since the 1950s, there have been a litany of attempts to revamp this green space, from a resort backed by two city officials to tourism magnate Duane Hagadone’s recent bid to turn it into a botanical garden and library. Each time, Coeur d’Alene residents have clearly said hands off.
“They won’t accept no,” says Art Manley, who was born two blocks from McEuen Field and is the leader of efforts to preserve the public recreation area.
“How any of these things would save downtown is beyond me,” he said
From the late 1800s to 1929, the Coeur d’Alene Lumber Co. mill stretched from present-day Hall to where The Coeur d’Alene Resort now towers, Manley said.
It pulled logs from the lake, about where the Third Street boat launch sits, milled them and used most of the rest of the ground to stack and dry lumber. Forty years of sawmilling dissipated into bankruptcy and the land went idle.
Midway through the 1930s, the city got a yen to produce its own electricity. It took two bond issues, but the voters finally agreed to purchase the 34-acre mill site for $19,000.
Private power companies didn’t like the idea of that competition and blocked the effort in the Legislature.
“It’s always amused me that the power company saved the area to become open space,” says attorney Scott Reed, who later joined efforts to save the green space.
Instead of kilowatts, the property became home to the Kootenai County Fair from the mid-1930s to the early 1950s, with the exception of World War II.
Government housing went up on the land during the war, to ease a home shortage induced by the Farragut Naval Training Base at Bayview. The shortage was so severe that residents even converted garages to bedrooms-for-rent.
“Most of the mortgages in town were paid off renting space,” Manley says with a chuckle.
The war ended, the housing was torn down or moved, and the fairgrounds moved. Weeds and speculation took over. “The downtown merchants were unhappy their business wasn’t the best,” Manley remembers. “This developer came in and sold them a bill of goods.”
The goods: four acres of what is now the Third Street boat launch would become a waterside shopping center. The developer offered $100,000. State law required the voters approve such a large transfer of public land.
“Being of a feisty nature, I got involved,” Manley says, forming the Lakeside Development Corp. with Reed, Mae McEuen and others to fight the effort. Voters resoundingly defeated the idea.
But Manley and his friends knew there was no lasting peace. “It was too tempting a piece of property to sit idle,” he says. “We decided to live up to our name in order to save it - and started to develop it.”
First was the boat dock, built with sweat, volunteers and even Manley helping finish the concrete. They begged equipment, started smoothing the park area and soon attracted support for a ball field.
The Lions Club put in underground sprinklers, the Kiwanis donated grass seed. The Rotary Club, wanting a piece of the park, followed with tennis courts.
Lakeside Development realized that commercial development of the area would include extending Fourth Street into what is now McEuen Field. They planted a 10-foot spruce in the middle of where the Fourth Street extension would have been constructed. It’s now a city fixture called the “permanent Christmas tree” - among other things.
That didn’t stop speculation. Much of the rest of the ground was still private, a legacy of its acquisition by an early-day developer named Tony A. Tubbs.
“He had a knack of putting his finger on all of the controversial areas,” Reed says. “He developed the Sanders Beach area and because of the manner he did it, he left that strip of land” that’s now contested as a public-private beach.
Tubbs platted a subdivision on Tubbs Hill but didn’t attract homes because the lots were too difficult to build on. The land ended up in the hands of the Idaho Water Co. and other private owners. The best part - flat land at the top of the hill - became speculation material for KAW Development Corp.
KAW - then City Attorney James T. Knudson, City Clerk Don C. Averitt and an investor named V.J. West - wanted to put a 50-room resort on the top of Tubbs Hill in the early 1960s. An access road would have cut right through McEuen Field. A proposed tramway for the exclusive use of the resort would have gone from the lakeside to the top of the hill with a sweetheart city lease KAW hoped to engineer.
The Planning Commission, which included Manley and Reed, refused to rezone the land commercial. The City Council approved it anyway. Afterward, the mayor called Reed to his house for coffee and kicked him off the planning commission.
Voters then kicked the mayor and the majority of the council out of office and elected a “Community Welfare Party” slate.
Ball field development continued through the 1960s and Mae McEuen’s name was attached to the area because the longtime grocer was a champion of children’s sports and the baseball and softball fields. And because she helped fight the waterfront mall. “She was part of a handful of businesses who had the courage to buck Main Street,” Manley says.
In the the 1970s, KAW re-emerged. The company announced it had a buyer for its Tubbs Hill land - a German company with condominium plans.
Reed persuaded KAW to sell the land to the city for $250,000 without a dime to back the offer. And then scrambled. The Trust For Public Lands, the Jewett Foundation, city residents and schoolchildren pitching in pennies, nickels and dimes raised $50,000.
The city found $75,000 - an insurance settlement it saved from the post-World War II arson of a bandshell, Reed said. Federal money from the Land and Water Conservation Fund covered the rest.
About the same time, the Idaho Water Co. announced it was doubling its rates.
Coeur d’Alene passed a bond issue, purchased the water works - and the rest of Tubbs Hill and McEuen Field.
“Many of us voted for it, not because we wanted the city to have a water system, but because we figured it was the best way to get this property,” Manley says.
“We were called obstructionists,” Reed adds. “But if all of their efforts succeeded, you’d have an aging shopping center, no ball fields, condos on the top of the hill and the water company gouging you.”
But the developers’ eyes have never turned from McEuen, Tubbs Hill, the Third Street boat launch and the rest of the green space. Coeur d’Alene promoters tried to revive hydroplane racing three years ago, using that land as spectator space.
Voters became so outraged, they passed a ballot initiative forever prohibiting thunderboats.
Two years ago, Coeur d’Alene Resort owner Hagadone pitched turning part of the area into botanical gardens and a library, offering millions of dollars to start the construction. More than 300 people turned out at a public meeting in opposition.
Last year, developer Joe Chapman wanted the eastern toe of Tubbs Hill for condominiums and offices. Legions of citizens again rose up to oppose that move.
Now the city of Coeur d’Alene has declared downtown in distress, established an urban renewal commission and is paying for a $150,000 study on how to redesign the green space, not only around McEuen, but all the way to Memorial Field.
Coeur d’Alene City Council President Nancy Sue Wallace says some changes have to be made, to dress up the area and attract more shoppers to the waterfront and downtown.
“I think the Park and Recreation building (near McEuen Field) is a joke,” Wallace said. “The parking lot is a complete eyesore.
“All I want from the community is for them to be open to new ideas. After we have the ideas, let’s have the conversation about good bad or indifferent.”
Even Reed is willing to entertain the notion of a library somewhere close by. He acknowledges the fear that that sort of thing will start commercial development, but “as a practical matter, it’s never going to happen,” he says.
The ball fields, boat launch and Tubbs Hill purchase all involved Land and Water Conservation funding, money that comes with heavy strings. The city would have to have state permission and repay the money - in current dollars, Reed said.
E.R.W. Fox, who has lived here since 1939 and was president of the Rotary Club when the tennis courts were installed at McEuen, hopes the newest effort will bring peace.
“Is it not time for us, the citizens of this great city to come together in the spirit of compromise, laying plans on what will do the greatest good for the greatest number?” Fox asks. “Mae McEuen would vote for that.”
Some of the area’s longtime protectors are open to changes - minimal changes. Manley is fine with an outdoor auditorium, perhaps, as long as it isn’t built in the middle of the ball fields. Others have hinted they will accept improvements to the green space, perhaps better ball fields or a dressed-up Memorial Stadium. Again the emphasis is on minimal.
“If this is an effort to make any drastic changes in McEuen Field,” Manley warns with a nod toward history, “there will be violent objections.”