Pleasantview Road has grand debut

Herb Heisel revved the red Corvette and hit the gas Friday for the inaugural cruise down the new 2.5 mile stretch of Pleasantview Road, which officials tout as a critical addition to Kootenai County’s road system.

“Awesome,” said Heisel, the recently retired Post Falls Highway District road supervisor. “It’s nice and smooth.”

Don Beck, who owns a majority of the property on the west side of the road that stretches in a straight black line from Seltice Way north to state Highway 53, hopped in his beat-up blue GMC farm truck with fuel tanks towering in the back and followed.

Locals have waited 20 years for this main north-south connection to open. Highway district officials say the $2.4 million stretch, which is near the Idaho-Washington state line, will alleviate congestion on state Highway 41 and eventually carry more traffic.

“This is a dream that has come true,” Highway District Commissioner Bob Wilbur told the crowd of about 30 people who gathered at the intersection of Seltice Way and Pleasantview for the ribbon cutting. “This is probably going to be the most important piece of road in our locality. Let’s wait and see.”

Pleasantview gives drivers coming from the north easy access to Interstate 90, which Wilbur said will make it a popular alternative to Highway 41. The highway is often clogged, making it difficult to get on the freeway.

The Rathdrum Prairie is laid out on a grid of one-square-mile increments. Every mile, the highway district has right-of-ways that are now roads. Around 1982, when Wilbur joined the highway commission, the group realized the highway district had no right-of-way through the fields that would someday become Pleasantview Road. Wilbur said nobody ever figured out why this strip was omitted from the grid, but the commissioners knew that eventually it would be a critical place for a road.

Wilbur and some of the other highway commissioners, including one who drove from Montana to witness the Pleasantview grand opening, began asking property owners for the right-of-way.

At first the property owners weren’t interested, but eventually they agreed.

Soon after, the state had $300,000 to give to a highway project in Kootenai County. County Commissioner Frank Henderson, who is currently running for the Idaho Senate, asked the local highway districts which projects were a priority.

The construction of Pleasantview Road ranked first, and in 1985 the Post Falls Highway District got the $300,000 to start the project.

“It’s critical because of the growth,” Henderson said Friday. “We see traffic backed up on Highway 41 all the time.”

Besides helping drivers navigate a better north-south route, highway officials said Pleasantview also will promote industrial development in the area. Already, Spokane Rock Products has a concrete batch plant at the corner of Seltice Way and Pleasantview Road. The company also wants to lease nearly 500 acres of Beck’s property to mine gravel and is waiting for the Kootenai County Commission to approve the project. Spokane Rock Products claims the project is unique because the mining wouldn’t leave a gigantic pit in the ground. Instead, it would remove the boulders from the property and then return the top soil, making the land easier to cultivate.

Some neighbors oppose the idea, arguing that Post Falls is growing in that direction and that the mine would harm residents’ quality of life and have negative impacts on the Rathdrum Prairie/Spokane Valley aquifer, which is the sole source of drinking water for more than 400,000 people.

For more information on Pleasantview Road, call the Post Falls Highway District at (208) 765-3717.