Stakeholders Discuss Prairie’S Future

A group of residents has been meeting since January to discuss the Rathdrum Prairie, trying to guide development there in the most sensible way possible.

The Citizens’ Advisory Group wants to bring together all the diverse interests involved in the prairie - from the grass farmers to bringing businesses to the area.

Six comprehensive plans, from Coeur d’Alene, Post Falls, Rathdrum, Hayden, Hauser and Kootenai County, must create a consensus - a concrete plan for the prairie’s future, said Kristy Johnson, a member of the group and representative of the Kootenai Environmental Alliance.

The group wants to tighten laws to ensure the prairie remains respected as viable economic land, as well as a beautiful, fragile area. That includes discussions about longtime resident George Thayer’s land that recently went up for sale.

“There is stuff out there you can or cannot build on,” Johnson said, citing the gas, train and high power lines.

Johnson said the advisory group wants new businesses to come; it just doesn’t want state Highway 41 to suffer the stop-and-go traffic of U.S. Highway 95.

The solution might be a limited-access highway, Johnson said. An outer road could cater to all of the turnoffs that have congested U.S. 95.

The majority, or 632 acres, of the Thayer land is zoned residential. Eighty acres are zoned commercial, and 368 are zoned industrial.

Because the land prices in the prairie are lower than Post Falls and Coeur d’Alene, the commercial and residential areas will sell quickly, said Jeff Wellmaker, Thayer’s Realtor from Windermere/Coeur d’Alene Realty. It could take more than five years to sell the 360 acres of industrial-zoned land.