My Page: Cate Huisman

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From the Idaho Panhandle

Recently, Bonner County commissioners deferred yet again a decision on the Clagstone Meadows development proposed for the southern end of the county. The county’s planning and zoning commission recommended approval of the proposal—the largest planned unit development in the county’s history—after 27 hours of review and discussion last August, and the county commission has already put 16 hours of review into it.

So what’s the holdup?

From the Idaho Panhandle

Sandpoint city councilman Stephen Snedden recently held a public workshop to discuss, among other things, his “Small Spaces Initiative,” an approach to “affordable housing and inexpensive commercial spaces” in the city. [Details are included here in the packet of materials provided to council members for the meeting.]The workshop garnered the attention of most members of the city’s Planning and Zoning Commission as well as a good sampling of builders and at least one real estate sales agent, and this garrulous group suffered no shortage of ideas and opinions about the proposal.

Snedden’s original idea was to provide a group of incentives to developers who were willing to build homes or offices with a footprint of less than 1000 square feet. Such a project would be deemed a “Certified Small Space.”

From the Idaho Panhandle

Having been recognized statewide with a Grow Smart Award from Idaho Smart Growth, and regionally with a Grand Award for Adaptive Re-Use at the Pacific Coast Builders Conference, Priest River’s venerable Beardmore Block has now garnered national recognition with an Award of Merit from the American Association for State and Local History. It was the only project in the inland Northwest to receive such an award this year.

Unlike the building’s previous awards, which focused on its architectural merits, the new award recognizes that the renaissance of the Beardmore Block represents a significant achievement in preserving a valuable piece of local history. “Now in its 65th year, the award was established to encourage standards of excellence in the collection, preservation and interpretation of state and local history throughout the United States,” says architect Brian Runberg’s press release. 

From the Idaho Panhandle

What panhandle forests have withheld in huckleberries and overtime pay for wildland fire fighters in this odd, cold, wet year, they are now making up for in the most prolific profusion of mushrooms in recent memory.

This blogger has personally annoyed fellow mountain bike riders over the past month with her constant stops to pick from among the surfeit of species lining the forest trails above Sandpoint. It’s been difficult to bike anywhere without identifying a dozen different kinds, and even a walk into town will reveal another dozen in local lawns and empty lots.

From the Idaho Panhandle

It seems odd, as we approach October, to be getting summer weather. Up here in the handle, NOAA forecasts highs in the mid-70s for the next several days. It’s nothing like the high of 90 degrees that they’re suggesting will arrive with October down in the pan at Boise, but still high enough to raise hopes for the delinquent tomatoes.

From the Idaho Panhandle

The radio delivered some heartening national news earlier this week—The long-faltering housing market began to recover last month, as was evident in a 10 percent increase in permits to build new homes. And for people who plan for the future of communities, a particularly pithy detail was that “much of the growth was in the apartment and condo sectors, up 32 percent from the month before. Construction of single family homes, which makes up the bulk of the housing market, rose at a much more modest rate of 4 percent.”

It remains to be seen how this pattern will play out in Sandpoint. But it meshes nicely with the town’s comprehensive plan and recently adopted code for commercial zones, which encourages the construction of apartments and condos on the upper stories of downtown buildings to accommodate anticipated population growth. 

From the Idaho Panhandle

The Festival at Sandpoint closed out its 28th season last night, and it seems to have been the usual copacetic experience, with good ticket sales and (mostly) good weather making it a successful event. Fans of Cape Breton fiddler Natalie MacMaster didn’t seem perturbed as a not-too-desperate rainfall and just a modicum of lightning introduced her performance Thursday night, and otherwise the weather’s been excellent, not even hot.

Many people are not aware that this children’s concert is just the tip of the iceberg with respect to what the festival does to encourage local youth to learn about music. We think of the concert series as entertainment for festival goers, but it actually also plays a significant role in what has been the recent phenomenal growth of youth music opportunities in town.

From the Panhandle

The town of Priest River will be holding its Timber Days festival at the end of this week, continuing a ritual that has gone on in some form as long as anyone can remember. The annual event has grown out of the celebration that used to occur after the yearly log drive down the Priest River, when brave and spry “river pigs” cajoled logs down the foaming and rock-infested waterway to its confluence with the Pend Oreille River and the lumber mills there.

Although the last drive was held over 50 years ago and most of the river pigs no longer walk this earth—and most of the mills are no longer with us either—the celebration remains as a commemoration of Priest River’s heritage as a timber town.

From the Panhandle

Keith Allred thinks things are going to be different this time. He has to. He’s a Democrat running for governor in Idaho.

Allred took a swing through Sandpoint earlier this week and stopped for coffee at a home on Second Avenue, where he was joined by far more people than there were chairs for, all wanting to hear his vision for the state that sits mostly south of us.

From the Panhandle

I have chosen not to shop at Sandpoint’s new Super 1 grocery store, opened a few weeks ago. It’s evident from their ads that they have lots of good deals on things I need, and my husband says they have a phenomenal salad bar. But they built a big box with a parking lot in front—a kind of structure that the people of Sandpoint had specifically said they didn’t want on the site Super 1 chose.

With the adoption of a Comprehensive Plan in 2009, citizens indicated instead that they wanted mixed-use developments in this area, with pedestrian-oriented storefronts near the street and parking lots in back. As a result, Super 1 is kind of a museum piece, an instant anachronism—the last big box fronted by a big parking lot within walking distance of Sandpoint’s downtown.

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