Lending Some Support
The bottom line is that these folks manufacture items that make your back feel better.
The 17 employees at McCarty Sacro-Ease, a 60-year-old business, make inserts for chairs and cervical pillows that support the lumbar area of a person’s back. Most of the 2,000 inserts made each month are for vehicles, with the primary customers being transit firms, such as trucking and busing companies, throughout the world.
Originating in Oakland, Calif., in 1940 and moving to Coeur d’Alene with Bill McCarty in 1980, the business has been purchased by Bret and Michele Dirks. He is a neuro-surgeon, she is president of the company. Originally from Moscow, they came to Coeur d’Alene in 1994.
In addition to the mass transit customers, SacroEase products are sold through pharmacies and stores that specialize in durable medical equipment and back-care products. The company may market braces, sport-seats and higher-end products to stores such as The Sharper Image.
Extra Innings, a sports restaurant and pub with inside seating for 209 customers, will open in early May at Quad Park in Post Falls. The business will serve sports patrons and fans of the park’s four softball fields.
The menu will include pizza, sandwiches, several beers on tap, wine, soft drinks and coffee drinks. Activities will include several TV sets tuned to sporting events and memberships in fantasy sports leagues.
Some 3,500 square feet of the new 4,800-squarefoot building are dedicated to the restaurant. Another area will sell sports gear, including balls, bats, gloves, shoes and clothing. The business will employ 14 to 21 employees, depending on the seasonal activities.
The 20-acre complex north of Mullan Road and a mile west of Highway 41 has five acres that are being seeded for use as soccer fields, possibly for use this fall. Quad Park has 55 employees in addition to those being hired at the restaurant. It has five owners and is managed by Phil Waters. Extra Innings’ hours will be 11 a.m. to 1 a.m. weekdays and 7 a.m. to 1 a.m. weekends.
Shooters Bar & Grill, featuring a complete remodeling of what had been the restaurant at Rockford Bay Resort, will open Saturday at Rockford Bay Marina on Lake Coeur d’Alene.
With new furnishings and decorating and enlargement of the bar area, the business has huge windows overlooking the lake. Decorating has an antique and outdoors accent with a small hydroplane, classic motorcycle and taxidermy products.
The full-service bar is fashioned from a gigantic cedar log, and special woodwork is featured throughout the building, which seats 75 customers inside and 75 on the deck.
Shooters will be open 11 a.m. to midnight Wednesdays through Sundays and 7 a.m. to midnight daily starting Memorial Day weekend. The full menu includes pizzas from brick ovens. The staff of 20 includes a former manager of The Cedars Restaurant and the chef from Crickets.
Across the street, the remodeled Rockford Bay Convenience Store is open 8 a.m. to 9:30 p.m. daily with four employees. Hours will ex pand as the weather warms.
Both businesses and the marina are owned by Marshall Chesrown, who is developing The Club at Black Rock, a 381-residence complex with golf course, tennis courts and equestrian trails on 650 acres above Rockford Bay. Chesrown, a Spokane native who found success with auto sales operations in the Denver area, also is building a 12,500-square-foot hangar at the Coeur d’Alene airport.
Nearly doubling in size to 7,600 square feet, Body by Scotty auto body repair and paint shop is expanding to 20 service bays at 311 E. Third Ave. in Post Falls.
The 5-year-old business will include 10 stalls for body repair and 10 for painting, with the number of employees growing from nine to 11. The expansion, also including a parts room, should be complete in June.
Services include collision repair, painting, restoration, hot rod work and towing. Owners are Scott Shawver, a Moscow native, and Sharon Sorenson, who came from Vale, Ore. The business is also known for thanking its customers and neighbors with a giant block party. Some 900 people attended last year.
Hours are 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. weekdays, and weekends by appointment. Phone 773-0925.