Arrow-right Camera
The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Proposed Post Falls marina expansion draws mixed feelings

Plans by StanCraft to expand Marina 33 Post Falls, adjacent to Red Lion Hotel Templins, has drawn pushback from area residents.  (Kathy Plonka/The Spokesman-Review)

A plan to expand a popular Post Falls marina on the Spokane River has drawn criticism from several residents along the river and support from other community members, like Mayor Ron Jacobson.

414 PF Hospitality LLC filed an application last year with the Idaho Department of Lands for an encroachment permit to expand Marina 33 at Red Lion Hotel Templin’s on the River, reconfigure fuel lines with two new dispensaries and build a new ship store on the river, according to the application. The application also calls for relocating the Kootenai County Sheriff’s Office boat garage within the marina footprint.

StanCraft, a Hayden, Idaho-based private family of companies, and an investor group announced their acquisition of Templin’s last spring.

The 167-room waterfront hotel, bar and marina was founded in 1986 and new ownership said in a news release last year that it would make upgrades to the hotel last year and this year. Marina 33, a StanCraft company, would also phase upgrades planned to the fuel system, the food and beverage stand and the marina.

StanCraft declined to comment, and a phone call Friday to 414 PF Hospitality LLC was not returned.

According to the application, the marina upgrades would include replacing old, decrepit docks and rearranging the marina to provide more moorage to the community, specifically 100 additional boat parking spaces, or boat slips.

The new boat slips were among the primary issues residents living near the marina addressed at a public hearing last month at Coeur d’Alene High School, claiming more boats on the water would cause more congestion and safety issues on the river. They also said the additional boats riding in the river would further damage residents’ docks and erode their shorelines.

“As concerned citizens, we believe that our elected officials and leaders have a blatant disregard for the current condition of the river, for the fact that most people believe (know) that the river most likely has exceeded its maximum carrying capacity a few years ago, and disregard that 100 additional easy-access boats would continue to do damage to the river,” Sheryl Scofield wrote in a proposed letter for newspaper publication.

Scofield lives with her husband, Scott Scofield, across the river from the marina.

A resident who lives down the river from the marina near Coeur d’Alene wrote in an email to the state that the additional boat slips will help fill the shortage of slips and that 100 slips will barely be noticed on the river.

The application also shows the sheriff’s office boat garage would be moved near the center of the marina while the new ship store, which offers items like life jackets, hats, gum and candy, would be built on the southeast edge of the marina.

Scott Hislop, an attorney representing StanCraft, said at the Dec. 19 hearing at the high school that relocating the ship store to the edge of the marina will help slow boaters’ speed as they enter the no-wake zone. Hislop said the ship store will be more accessible and safer for boaters to enter and exit the marina. Gas tanks would be located outside the store.

In a letter from Post Falls Mayor Ron Jacobson to the Department of Lands, Jacobson offered his support for the application.

“I have reviewed the applicant’s plans to reinvigorate the marina by providing additional slips and a publicly accessible boardwalk and believe that these improvements will benefit the residents of Post Falls by increasing public access to the river, which is part of what makes living in North Idaho so desirable,” Jacobson wrote.

Jacobson told The Spokesman-Review the proposed Templin’s redevelopment, which he said includes new condominiums, will be a “huge benefit” to the city. He said he’d love to see Templin’s brought back to the quality level that Bob Templin had it when he built it in the mid-1980s.

“I think it’s a diamond in the rough,” Jacobson said. “It was at one point a very viable operation, very well maintained, and then it just went downhill.

“I think for anybody to come in like StanCraft is planning to do and renovate the project I think is going to be nothing but beneficial to the city.”

He said he understands concerns about the heavy traffic on the river, but still supports the marina expansion.

“That river has changed so much since I was a kid you wouldn’t even recognize it,” he said. “I know it’s extremely busy. I understand that the people along both sides of the river are concerned about boat traffic, as am I.”

Four residents, including Scott and Sheryl Scofield, requested last month’s public hearing in a letter to the Department of Lands. In the letter, the residents voiced concerns about the additional boat slips and bright lighting on StanCraft’s waterfront.

About a dozen residents, including the four residents who signed the objection letter, spoke in opposition to the application at last month’s hearing.

The marina would expand farther into the river, further narrowing the river and causing more boat traffic and safety problems, residents claimed. A diagram in the application shows the narrowest point of the river at the marina would be 320 feet from the new ship store to the other side of the river.

Sheryl Scofield told The Spokesman-Review her primary issue with the proposed expansion is it would encroach into water that does not belong to the marina. The application indicated the project would stay in the “original encroachment permit boundaries.”

Mike Ahmer, resource supervisor at the Department of Lands’ Navigable Waterways program in North Idaho, said at the public hearing that the “logboom,” which the marina would expand to, is not part of the marina footprint.

“It’s historically only been the marina itself that sets the footprint,” Ahmer said. “If approved, the new breakwater that they’re proposing would set the marina footprint since it’s incorporated into the marina with marina slips and it’s connected to shore.”

Ahmer said there are no rules for the Department of Lands to enforce when it comes to additional boat slips provided in the Spokane River or related to potentially increasing boat traffic.

“While objectors have raised concerns regarding carrying capacity of the Spokane River and potential associated safety risk, there currently is no information in the record to show that these effects are likely to occur,” Ahmer said.

Ahmer said the Department Lands can appreciate concerns about boat traffic, but the state agency did not receive comments from the county, sheriff’s office or other agencies with expertise about boater safety being jeopardized by additional boat slips.

“With there currently being insufficient evidence in the record regarding any likely adverse impacts of lighting or increased boat traffic, in addition to there being no specific encroachment standards relating to those impacts for IDL to enforce, these concerns as presently stated in the record are likely not sufficient grounds for denial of the application,” he said.

Sheryl Scofield told The Spokesman-Review there have been several unreported accidents and near-misses on the river that the sheriff’s office doesn’t know about.

She said she also believed Idaho code goes against additional boat slips because the protection of recreation and “aesthetic beauty” of the river must be considered against the navigational and economic benefits of the proposal.

“We say it’s profit versus the best for the river and for human life and safety,” Sheryl Scofield said.

Rick Sloan, who lives about six houses down from the marina, was one of the residents who said 100 more boats on the water would worsen safety and soil erosion along waterfront properties like his.

“The river’s only so wide, and I just don’t know how much more traffic it can handle,” he said.

Sloan said he’s rooting for StanCraft as a whole.

“I want them to succeed down there,” he said. “That Templin’s, we’ve always said it feels like kind of a diamond in the rough and it just needs a little shot in the arm.”

The public comment period is over.

The hearing officer, who conducted last month’s hearing and is employed by the Idaho Office of Administrative Hearings, will make a recommendation to approve or deny the application, according to Sharla Arledge, Department of Lands spokesperson. Department of Lands Director Dustin Miller will issue the final order by Feb. 14, she said.