Building anchors 'artsy' west side

SANDPOINT — The 80-some year saga of the Foster’s Crossing building continues to unfold, as antiques and the arts create what owners David and Kate Luers call the “community” that gives the heartbeat to this historic space.

The business is part of an arts-centric core that has formed on the west side of the city, a trend the owners hope won’t be disrupted by a traffic reroute plan for U.S. Highway 2 that will take place virtually in the shadow of the former railroad freight warehouse.

The original plank floors show the passing of time in the grooves where hand trucks and freight carts once shuttled goods in and out of the building.

Built in the 1930s as Merchant Shipping & Transfer, the three-story, 12,000-square-foot railroad freight stands as a sturdy reminder of Sandpoint’s past.

At the center of the building stands Café Bodega — an eatery where the feel of grandma’s dining room combines with a menu that features gourmet soups, salads and sandwiches. Looming above the antique tables is a loft that still houses the wheel and cable that once hauled merchandise from the basement to the loading dock.

In what is now the kitchen, the walls were built extra thick and filled with wood chips for insulation.

“That was the ice house for blocks of ice brought in from Lake Cocolalla,” said David Luers. “Later on, this building was used as the Kist Root Beer bottling plant. We still have people who come in and say they worked there.”

By the 1970s — a period in Sandpoint’s history when the number of transplanted hippies nearly rivaled the number of sawmill jobs — one section of the warehouse by the railroad tracks was occupied by a store that went by the name of The Big Pink Trading Company.

“They had been in the south end of the building and, when they closed up, it was completely empty,” said Dick Foster, who purchased the building with his wife, Betsy, in 1978. “So we bought the whole thing.”

The Fosters ran the indoor antique mall for nearly three decades, during which time its tenants included a used bookstore, multiple antique vendors and a popular sandwich shop. The café concept and many of the antique sellers remain in place today, said Luers, who, along with his wife Kate, bought the building in 2005 after the passing of Betsy Foster.

“Dick and Betsy did 90 percent of what we still have going here,” Luers said. “Functionally, it’s still the same building they left us.

“It was such a smooth hand-off that we were never even closed a day,” he added.

A few things have changed — there is a complete yarn shop where the bookstore once did business — but the basic layout and sales format has stayed in place. Along with a stand-alone antique shop, the old freight warehouse is filled with the goods of about 20 independent antique vendors, whose finds are displayed in eclectic spaces that take up every corner of all three floors.

“The difference is that when you go into a lot of antique shops, it’s like a museum,” said Luers. “Our vendors really merchandise their space, so things are constantly changing and shifting all the time.”

The owners have found a way to mix antiques and collectibles with arts and culture in a monthly event called Five Minutes of Fame. On the third Wednesday of every month, plays host to an open microphone gathering where poets, writers of prose, storytellers and musicians try out their original works for the audience at Café Bodega. The event, which started about 10 years ago, has been in residence at Foster’s Crossing since the Luers took over the business.

“We’ll get accomplished writers and poets and we’ll get people as young as eight years old — it’s a multi-generational gathering,” the owner said. “I think one of the reasons this has gone on so long is that it’s not a bar situation. The setting is intimate. It’s not a stage with lights glaring down on you.”

Primarily comprised of writers who use the event to test the waters for their own works, Five Minutes of Fame may be the bailiwick of readers, but it feels more like reader’s theatre, according to Luers.

“It’s more than just reading, it’s performance,” he said. “It’s animated in that way. And because of the proximity to the listeners, there’s a feeling of participation.” 

On average, the open mic night draws about 30 people who first come to share a meal and then get started with their five-minute slots in the spotlight, figuratively speaking, after dinner.

Turning the café into a performance space ties nicely into what is going on at other west-Sandpoint addresses, according to Luers, who pointed out that various buildings located near what once was a busy stretch of railroad tracks have found new life as art galleries, class and workshop spaces and artisan coffee roasteries.

“The west side of Sandpoint has so much and there are so many artsy shops in this part of town,” he said.

But just as surely as the steady passage of freight trains used to dissect the west side from the downtown core, the city’s plans for a project called “The Curve” could either divide the two with multiple lanes of traffic or, using a different design, lace them together in a network of walking paths and green belts.

“I hope The Curve doesn’t create too much separation for bikes and walkers, because we’re rated as one of the best walking towns in the country,” said Luers, spinning his laptop around and tapping in the name of a site called Walk Score to prove his point.

The website, which gives an average rating of 60 to U.S. cities rated as being either walker-friendly or tough to navigate in anything but a motor vehicle, refers to Sandpoint as a “walker’s paradise” — something Luers believes can be further improved when heavy truck traffic finally gets re-routed to the Sand Creek Byway. Add to that a pending traffic flow plan for the current “T” at the junction of Fifth Avenue and U.S. Highway 2 and the picture could be even brighter, he added.

“Right now, we have a walkability rating of 97, which I think is amazing,” Luers said, noting that a big part of the city’s charm is the ability to stroll easily from places like Foster’s Crossing to the Farmer’s Market, downtown shops and City Beach. “There are a lot of smart people working on The Curve, so I’m hopeful. It could be great, but if it’s done wrong — with eight lanes in a sea asphalt instead of substantial green space — it could almost be like the Berlin Wall.”

As the plans and ideas begin to swirl for a traffic flow project that will take place right outside his back door, Luers walks along an old wood floor that creaks pleasantly underfoot. The classic building has seen a lot of change but, for the past 33 years, has remained delightfully predictable in nature.

“Really, it’s a community and that’s what we love about it,” the owner said. “We enjoy being here and doing what we do. Hopefully, we’ll be doing it for a long time.”