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Re: Spokane airport spur // Re: Trainnews
Author: Bruce Kelly
Date: 11-10-2019 - 08:17
The latest issue of Grant County Magazine (link below), which rolled off our press and out of our bindery a week or so ago, is one of several publications from eastern Washington over the past decade or so that have illustrated the incredible growth which that area has seen in terms of manufacturing, ag, tech, logistics, etc., (in other words, JOBS, and with that...new housing), with many of those new businesses being drawn there by the availability of freight rail service.
[columbiabasinherald.wa.newsmemory.com]
Anybody who saw places like Quincy, Moses Lake, Othello, Connell, Ritzville, or the Tri Cities back in the mid-1980s would be pleasantly surprised to see how much they've risen from the ashes, dust, and tumbleweeds to become vibrant economic centers.
Meanwhile, here in Post Falls, ID, our city council and planning officials can't seem to attract any sort of customers to the chunks of property that line what's left of BNSF's Coeur d'Alene Branch, a mix of ex-NP, GN, and MILW track that now ends roughly mid-way between Post Falls and CdA. Most people living here today have no idea that there were once four separate branch lines reaching into CdA, three of them passing through Post Falls. The demise of the lumber mills feeding those branches was caused more by competition from larger and more efficient mills elsewhere (including Canada)and by the allure of big, easy money from resort and condo developers seeking to acquire those mill sites, than anything else. Other than a few off years when housing construction slumped, the demand for lumber production in the Inland Northwest remained sky high even as the last one or two of CdA's mills were clinging to life. Record lumber output for the three counties surrounding CdA occurred in 1990, with 629 million board feet produced by just 15 mills. That's almost double the output of the same area in 1910, when 350 MBF came out of 77 mills.
Today, Post Falls and CdA are all about new housing, more restaurants and hotels, some welcome growth in the number of medical facilities, but all of it amounting to incredible sprawl, population growth, and traffic. The vast majority of people who keep moving here have to commute west to the Spokane area to find jobs with decent pay.
The expansion of freight rail services in and around Spokane, including the Highline/Four Lakes grain terminal and the Geiger Spur, and now this new expansion closer to the airport, not far from where Amazon has built a huge new distribution center, is probably just the beginning of what will become a much bigger enterprise than most people currently envision.
[columbiabasinherald.wa.newsmemory.com]
Anybody who saw places like Quincy, Moses Lake, Othello, Connell, Ritzville, or the Tri Cities back in the mid-1980s would be pleasantly surprised to see how much they've risen from the ashes, dust, and tumbleweeds to become vibrant economic centers.
Meanwhile, here in Post Falls, ID, our city council and planning officials can't seem to attract any sort of customers to the chunks of property that line what's left of BNSF's Coeur d'Alene Branch, a mix of ex-NP, GN, and MILW track that now ends roughly mid-way between Post Falls and CdA. Most people living here today have no idea that there were once four separate branch lines reaching into CdA, three of them passing through Post Falls. The demise of the lumber mills feeding those branches was caused more by competition from larger and more efficient mills elsewhere (including Canada)and by the allure of big, easy money from resort and condo developers seeking to acquire those mill sites, than anything else. Other than a few off years when housing construction slumped, the demand for lumber production in the Inland Northwest remained sky high even as the last one or two of CdA's mills were clinging to life. Record lumber output for the three counties surrounding CdA occurred in 1990, with 629 million board feet produced by just 15 mills. That's almost double the output of the same area in 1910, when 350 MBF came out of 77 mills.
Today, Post Falls and CdA are all about new housing, more restaurants and hotels, some welcome growth in the number of medical facilities, but all of it amounting to incredible sprawl, population growth, and traffic. The vast majority of people who keep moving here have to commute west to the Spokane area to find jobs with decent pay.
The expansion of freight rail services in and around Spokane, including the Highline/Four Lakes grain terminal and the Geiger Spur, and now this new expansion closer to the airport, not far from where Amazon has built a huge new distribution center, is probably just the beginning of what will become a much bigger enterprise than most people currently envision.
