Plan Could Preserve A Legacy Cougar Bay Landowner Tries To Work Out Conservancy Deal

World-class talent as a machinist and a fierce ornery streak have helped John Pointner invent ways around problems all his life.

Even when the 81-year-old reclusive inventor suffered a stroke a year and a half ago that left the left side of his body dead, those qualities rallied to his aid.

Pointner, a mechanical engineer, rigged a spring that runs from his shoe to his pant leg. The spring keeps his foot from dragging and allows him to move around his property on the shores of Lake Coeur d’Alene with the help of a walker.

But that property - 150 acres of scenic Cougar Bay lakefront that many would like to see preserved - presents an especially thorny problem.

Pointner is struggling to get The Nature Conservancy to buy his corner of Cougar Bay before he dies.

He’s made the bay his mission, and spent three decades cutting canals to flush the mud eroding off nearby hills.

He wants to create a museum in an old mining cabin next to the water.

And he wants that museum to sit on the shores of the John C. Pointner Wildlife Refuge.

“This lake is my life,” he says. “I’m after somebody else to take over so my 38 years won’t be wasted.”

Pointner offered The Nature Conservancy a deal he calls a no-brainer: The conservancy buys the property for $2 million, but only pays $400,000 down and the rest over 10 years with 7 percent interest.

There’s a kicker. When Pointner dies, any debt is forgiven.

The Conservancy says it’s not so simple.

“We don’t like to bet on anybody’s mortality,” said Lou Lunti, the Conservancy’s acting Idaho state director.

The total offer is more than the property is worth, Lunti said, which would violate an IRS requirement that the Conservancy pay the appraised value.

Even though the Conservancy has wanted to buy the property since 1994, the group isn’t interested unless the price drops.

“Not to diminish our interest in the property, but we need to find a realistic and legal way of putting it together,” Lunti said.

The Pointner land is a watery gem on the south end of the bay: 2,200 feet of waterfront, mostly wetlands, and 60 acres of uplands consisting of a hillside covered in old forest and a couple buildings on a grassy fringe. Two young moose ambled around on the land last week. There are reports of occasional black bear sightings, several beaver lodges, a wealth of shorebirds and waterfowl, osprey and bald eagles.

And most important to The Nature Conservancy, the land adjoins the group’s 88-acre Cougar Bay Preserve and another 125 acres owned by Crown Pacific.

Pointner rejected a 1997 offer from the Conservancy for $1.5 million for the then-160-acre property, according to KJ Hackworthy, the Conservancy’s Coeur d’Alene field representative. Now the property is 150 acres and appraised at between $800,000 and $1.2 million, she said.

Pointner took out a parcel - a buildable section near U.S. Highway 95 - to give to his daughter for money he owes her.

Today, the group is still deciding if it can raise enough money to buy the property if the offer drops, Hackworthy said. She started polling potential donors - most in North Idaho and Eastern Washington - about six weeks ago.

The Conservancy opposes putting Pointner’s name on a new reserve, Hackworthy said.

Generally, if the Conservancy puts a name on a reserve purchased for full market value, it’s the name of the most generous donor.

“It already has a name … the Cougar Bay Preserve,” she said. With that attitude, the group is missing a “one-time opportunity,” says Alan Golub, a Hayden businessman and real estate agent representing Pointner.

“They’ll never get that offer again,” Golub said. “He’s willing to forgive a $1.6 million note. Those terms are extraordinarily generous.”

Visiting the property last week, Golub pushed Pointner in his wheelchair to the locked door of a red wooden building. The Coeur d’Alene Machine and Repair Works.

Pointner started working in his father’s machine shop 70 years ago, as an 11-year-old.

Now Pointer struggles at the entry, his foot catching on the high threshold as he moves from chair to walker.

But once inside the shop, his mind takes over.

“The mathematics in this place are something fierce,” Pointner says.

He moves from machine to machine, running his eyes over recent repairs by an assistant.

Precision gear shapers as old as their master sit in piles of fresh metal shavings. More than 1,500 gears line the walls, wide teeth honed to perfection.

On the way out, Pointner talks Golub through the makeshift burglar alarm, fashioned from a trip wire, a feather, a cotter pin - and a ship to port signal horn with a five-mile range.

Outside, the ground is covered in more inventions and relics of Lake Coeur d’Alene’s history.

The hulking, vaguely medieval wagon with 4-foot-tall metal wheels is actually an amphibious tractor, invented years ago to cut horsetails for a tea-making venture. The wheels are irrigation sprinklers.

Pointner points out the first diesel engine used on the lake, and a steam engine from a ferry that ran from Windy Bay to Harrison.

He says a father and son died in the lake when their car, towed by the ferry, rolled into the water.

“I’m the only guy who knows these things.”

Selling the property to the Conservancy would give Pointner enough money to do the museum. He also would avoid the dent capital gains taxes would put in his estate.

Development isn’t out of the question, though. Golub said several buyers are interested. The property could hold up to 12 waterfront homes. The timber could be logged.

Perhaps if The Nature Conservancy isn’t interested, a group of private donors or the Idaho Department of Parks and Recreation is, Golub said.

The property is a rare find, the Conservancy’s Lunti said.

“It’s a missing piece in Cougar Bay right now,” he said. “It would be a great opportunity for the community to expand on the preserve we already have there.”

Zaz Hollander can be reached at (208) 765-7129 or by e-mail at zazh@spokesman.com.