Spirit Lake businesses booming

SPIRIT LAKE – Marilyn Smith is thankful she can finally buy a book without having to make the more than 50-mile round-trip drive into Coeur d’Alene.

On a recent afternoon, Smith was visiting Spirit Lake Books & Coffee to catch up with owners John and Terri Zucker.

“This place is unbelievable for me because I’m such a book nut,” said Smith, who lives just outside town. “It’s wonderful in light of gas prices.”

“We built this place not just to sell stuff,” said John Zucker. “It’s a big space. It can be a community meeting place.”

Just seven months old, Spirit Lake Books & Coffee has become just that – a gathering place for locals who pop in to browse the shelves of used books, buy a latte or munch on one of Terri Zucker’s fresh-baked pastries. Several community groups have started to use the store for their meetings.

The coffee shop is at the center of a blossoming commercial district at the south end of town on Highway 41 and a larger Spirit Lake business renaissance with a flurry of new retail openings. The town now boasts new restaurants, shops and its first bank. Other existing businesses have undergone major renovations.

“It’s the times catching up to Spirit Lake,” said Tom Russell, chairman of the town’s Urban Renewal Agency and a member of its Planning and Zoning Commission. “All the growth in Post Falls and Coeur d’Alene is moving up here.”

For years Spirit Lake has been the sleepy kind of bedroom community where the local potter leaves wares on outside shelves so shoppers can peruse at their convenience, sliding payments under the front door.

Now the new bank boasts 400 new accounts, all opened within the past two months, said Inland Northwest Bank Spirit Lake Branch Manager Roxanne Kusler. “It’s not typical, but it’s been very exciting,” Kusler said of the branch’s immediate success.

Kusler also serves as the newly elected president of the Spirit Lake Chamber of Commerce.

“We would really like a pharmacist up here. It’s the one piece we’re still missing,” she said.

Though a pharmacist isn’t in the mix at this time, more Spirit Lake businesses are on their way.

Another restaurant, a feed store and NAPA auto parts store are opening on Highway 41.

The business surge was made possible by Spirit Lake’s burgeoning population which has grown from 1,376 people in 2000 to 1,621 people in 2006, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

And that’s just within the city limits.

“There’s a lot of growth around the city, too,” Russell said, citing development along the lake and just over the county line in Bonner County.

“The lake is just bringing people here,” said Kusler. “People want lakefront property and they’re going where they can get it.”

Russell said much of the business growth was spawned by the expansion of Millers’ Harvest Foods two years ago. Its success gave other business owners the encouragement to also give Spirit Lake a chance.

John Zucker said he’s not surprised by the development. He, Terri and their two children moved to town two years ago to escape the crowded East Coast and find a more friendly town.

“We saw the potential here right away,” he said.

So far the new businesses haven’t overwhelmed Spirit Lake’s small-town charm. Most are owned by locals who “get” the community, Russell said.

That suits the Zuckers just fine.

“What I don’t want to see happen to Spirit Lake is for it to become a place with too many chains,” Terri Zucker said.