Pickin' my brain

Pardon me while I do some brainstorming. Am getting together with a professional writer today to discuss the changing face of Sandpoint. This writer is hoping to do an in-depth study of what's happening to our community and how folks are reacting to the change.

This evening I may attend the City Planning and Zoning meeting about the proposed Selkirk Air Park directly south and east of us. So, close, in fact, its north border will be just south of our pond.

If approved, it will include 26 various-sized lots to support hangar development on the airport's west side. It will be a high-end air park with nice landscaping, etc. The developers are the same folks who got Quest Aviation (to our east) off the ground. By the way, when they took their Kodiak prototype to its coming-out party in Anchorage last month, seven customers placed orders.

I've also heard from two sources that Franklin Graham, son of Billy Graham, visited Quest recently. Nothing like having a credible name associated with your newly-designed missionary cargo plane. This time next year, they're hoping to be up and going with more than 100 manufacturing employees added to their engineering/design staff. The giant manufacturing building behind our barn is putzing along with its exterior nearly complete.

Looking north on Great Northern Road, we can see new series of parallel stakes with orange ribbon along the road's east side. So far, they've been planted just north of our border and extend to Woodland Drive. I also spotted a surveyor's orange paint circle at the end of our driveway yesterday.

Could be when I mow the lawn from now on along the front of the place, I'll have a few wooden obstacles to contend with. Of course, we own that portion of the road, so I hope they ask us first. This survey stuff, I'm guessing, has to do with plans to improve Great Northern Road.

The folks' former Upper Place got the go-ahead for initial stages of its planned 29-unit townhouse subdivision. Apparently, the contractor satisfied the Army Corps of Engineers after they slapped him with a violation earlier this spring. So, this summer, he's gonna start constructing his road through the middle of the place.

Over on Boyer, the first of 12 houses in "Grand View Estates" across from Robersons and right next to the airport runway is going up. The street through Roberson's former hayfield is paved, and it appears all the utilities have been planted. Haven't seen any action yet on the 30-house subdivision slated to go in east of the Mormon Church on Schweitzer Cut-off Road.

I do have a architect's vision of Ralph's 18-hole golf course with its southeast boundary just north of the Bonner County Fairgrounds. If approved, it will include 200 townhouses and will extend to the railroad tracks to the west, beyond the Schweitzer Road to the north and to HWY 95 to the east.

Dover will grow by 500 houses when Ralph's Dover Bay is complete. Two subdivisions on either side of HWY 2 near the Idaho Department of Lands will support nearly 60 new homes. John Gillham's Forest Knoll subdivison off Pine Street on Baldy Mountain has all the roads paved and the bike paths laid out. Hard to tell how many lots will sell in that sprawling wooded layout.

Nick, who developed a nice subdivision below and later carved out the lower part of Greenhorn Mountain above for a few choice view lots, has reportedly started the process on another development just off Pine Street near the steep road that goes to the top.

Seasons at Sandpoint, the luxury condo complex along Lake Pend Oreille's north shore, has upped its planned units to 162. That change was approved at last week's special City Council meeting. Speaking of downtown, I haven't heard how many living units will be designated for the top level of the new Panhandle Bank complex.

Those are subdivisions/developments in the immediate area and to the west that I know about personally. I'll be passing along those examples along with some related ideas. If anyone knows about other developments and the numbers involved, I'll welcome the information.

I'll suggest topics such as how our local governmental, educational entities are moving forward to meet the infrastructure needs of the population influx these and other local developments will support.

I'm also planning to suggest a dimension I hear over and over----our younger population and how they can ever afford to live in or near Sandpoint. And, then, there are the low-to-moderate-income land owners of all ages who must wonder how these rising real estate prices will affect them tax-wise.

There's also the rural element. I know of a few stories where our long-established agricultural families are going to some creative ends to maintain their lifestyles and their farmland. For example, conservancies offer a variety of ways to preserve the land from development. Many locals are researching these opportunities in hopes of finding the right fit for their individual situations.

Another phenomenon, I believe, is happening right at this time. People, like the Loves, who thought they might sell in order to escape the encroaching development, have decided to stay put. In our case, the decision was easy once we saw how much it would cost us to relocate, what few comparable set-ups were available within our price range, and how far away we'd have to move to replace we have now.

So, we'll sit tight and deal with what's happening all around us. I'm wondering how decisions similar to ours are affecting the realtors' supply and demand challenges. Is the supply drying up?

Lots to think, examine and discuss about with this rapidly changing face of our community. It will be fun to read the outcome of what this writer learns from this in-depth study.