Supermarket Site Represents Many Issues

The scenery is changing at Lakeland High School, and complaints from students are louder than the sounds of construction from next door.

Parents are surprised, too, about the construction taking place where a grove of pine trees once stood. Why is there so much concern over a piece of property? It all has to do with location.

Super 1 Foods is building a new supermarket less than 1,000 feet from the front door of Lakeland High School, and students there are worried.

“I wish they had chosen a different location,” said Lakeland junior Shasta Magee. “The fact that there’s a giant supermarket there instead of trees bothers me, and there is always the issue of garbage. No one wants to see trash from the supermarket blown down on the track.”

“I hate it,” said Krystyna Zak, another Lakeland student. “They cut down all those trees just so they could build a supermarket.”

Super 1 owner Ron McIntire said the site was chosen for the grocery store in the winter of 1998. It was the right spot to build because of its location and accessibility.

The new store and its proximity to the school grounds have raised three important concerns from parents and students in the district. Foremost for parents is safety.

“With the main highway going past the high school and junior high, the area is treacherous regardless of the crossing guards, and the supermarket definitely won’t help the situation any,” explained Elaine Magee, who works as a special education aide at the high school. Her daughter, Shasta, is a student at Lakeland. “When they started building the supermarket they put a telephone pole on the corner, and as traffic increases it’s only a matter of time before someone misses the turn into the school during the winter and slides into the pole.”

McIntire said, though, that he’s not worried about a lack of safety, because students don’t cause him to worry.

“We live in an area where the kids are pretty good,” he said.

Joyce Nowacki is a trustee on the Lakeland School Board and says safety is a key factor in having a supermarket so close to the school. “You know the kids will go there for lunch, but there is no gate in the fence between the high school and the supermarket. This means students will have to go out onto the highway to get to the store, which is very dangerous. On the other hand, it might make people slow down. I would hope, though, that people would drive carefully near the school whether there is a store there or not.”

Although parents are mostly concerned about the supermarket’s implications on safety around the school, students are more preoccupied with how the new building will affect Lakeland’s image. Most students at the high school already think it is an eyesore.

“What I don’t like about it is mainly that they tore down so many trees, and the fact that they put the store right in front of the high school,” said Zak. “They could have found a location that wasn’t right next to the school to build their store.”

To help block the view of the supermarket from the school, the Lakeland School District recently paid to have a row of shrubs planted along the front fence. However, students point out that the bushes still are only a few feet high and will take a long time to mature.

Right now, the grocery store is going through a massive landscaping project, McIntire said.

“We’ve got lots of trees and shrubs planted,” he said. “There’s quite a bit of greenery on that site right now. The trees had to be taken out in order to put the building and parking lot in.”

Another concern among students and administrators is that the supermarket could become a hangout for students to smoke and drink off campus.

“It is a worry that there may be a problem with kids going over to the supermarket to smoke during lunch,” said Nowacki, “but if something is going to be built there, why not a supermarket?”

Despite misgivings about the location of the supermarket, however, many students and parents acknowledge it will provide a much-needed boost for Rathdrum’s economy and may even provide a few extra jobs for students at the high school.

Currently, teenagers who work in Rathdrum are limited to places such as gas stations, video stores, or the local IGA as choices for employment.

McIntire said the new grocery store will hire 115 new employees - 20 or so of them will be high school students.

“It is good for Rathdrum to get another store in the area. It will give the IGA some competition: people will have a choice about where to shop. Students will also have another alternative for lunch,” said Elaine Magee.

“The supermarket will help Rathdrum grow, and it will give more jobs to teens,” Zak admitted. “But I still wish they had put it somewhere else.”

In other Lakeland news

Conrad Underdahl has been hired as the new principal of Lakeland High School. He is from the Moscow area and graduated from the University of Idaho.

Underdahl has been the principal of Troy High School in the Whitepine School District since 1995. He has 14 years of experience in the classroom and five years of experience in administration.