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Highway neighbors in limbo

John Janke is majority owner of the Rimrock Golf Course in the Chilco area north of Coeur d'Alene. He and other business owners east of U.S. Highway 95 have received notice that future plans for the highway will likely route it through their businesses. (Jesse Tinsley / The Spokesman-Review)
Taryn Brodwater Staff writer
John Janke is majority owner of the Rimrock Golf Course in the Chilco area north of Coeur d'Alene. He and other business owners east of U.S. Highway 95 have received notice that future plans for the highway will likely route it through their businesses. (Jesse Tinsley / The Spokesman-Review)

John Janke had big dreams of transforming his Rimrock Golf Course into a fruit-themed course, with a different fruit tree at every hole: an apple hole, a peach hole, maybe some grapevines growing along the fence at the fifth hole.

Now his retirement dreams are in the bunker.

Plans to widen Highway 95, making it a four-lane, divided highway, will displace the 9-hole course and up to 40 other businesses between Garwood and Sagle. Up to 77 households also could be affected, according to an impact study.

Janke, 49, said he is growing increasingly frustrated with the project. He wants to know how much longer he’ll have his property and how he’ll be compensated for the loss of his golf course.

Officials haven’t been forthcoming with answers, he said.

“They don’t tell you if it’s tomorrow, next year, five years or 20 down the road,” he said.

Without solid information, Janke said he’s hesitant to invest any more money into the golf course – or do much more than maintain and mow the greens.

Property owners along the highway received letters this week seeking permission for engineers and surveyors to come onto their property between now and next summer. The letters offer few details on the actual highway project.

According to the Idaho Transportation Department, a final environmental impact statement and design for the project could be finished this summer. Construction on the Athol and Chilco portions of the project could begin in 2009, project manager Don Davis said.

Connecting Idaho Partners, which is working with the state on the project, will arrange meetings with property owners within the next month to gather information about the properties and answer questions about the work, Davis said. The meetings, however, will not be an opportunity for owners to negotiate the right-of-way, he said.

It will be sometime next year before property owners will learn how much compensation they’ll receive for the loss of their land, he said.

“We understand their frustrations,” Davis said.

Sue Wallace is a retired ITD employee and now co-owner of the Garwood Saloon. The bar at the corner of Highway 95 and Garwood Road will be razed to make way for an overpass, she said.

Wallace acknowledges the need to improve the dangerous stretch of highway, but she said she’s frustrated by the seemingly slow pace of the project.

Some people mistakenly think the bar already shut down in anticipation of the roadwork, Wallace said. Traffic snafus on Highway 95 – bumper-to-bumper traffic and numerous accidents – also discourage potential customers, she said.

She and co-owner Wayne Darwood have cut back the bar’s hours, opening later in the afternoon with last call earlier than before.

“We were hoping to make it our retirement place,” Wallace said. “The road coming through is going to wipe it out … They should do it in a speedy manner and not make us sit there and suffer.”

Janke said his customers also have heard the highway is coming. “How can I sell season passes for next year when I can’t tell people with honesty I’m going to be here next year?” he said.

Both Janke and Wallace say it’s tough living in limbo. “The hard part is not knowing,” Janke said. “I’d be perfectly happy running my little golf course until I was 80 years old.”