Council sinks water-based business regs

COEUR d'ALENE — Despite plans by the city to acquire more waterfront for public recreation, the city recently pulled the plug on plans to allow and regulate water-based businesses along city beaches.

By a 3-2 vote at last week’s City Council meeting, council members voted to deny water-based businesses from floating plans to operate from shore. The move comes at a time when the city intends to acquire another half mile of waterfront at the former Atlas Mill site along the Spokane River.

City committee members, including the Parks and Rec commission, have wrestled with the idea for several years on whether to allow waterborne businesses to operate offshore. Parks and Rec commission members decided a few months ago that safety concerns would take precedence over new business opportunities.

City Council member Ron Edinger said the commission “basically had a lot of concern about the activities outside the city.”

Water-based businesses could legally set up outside a 1,000-foot buffer — the extent of the city’s property boundary in the lake — but their businesses required having a hub on shore where tickets were sold, or where boat taxis picked up customers.

Having more boat traffic inside the 1,000-foot buffer alongside swimmers, tubers, paddle boarders and kayakers was deemed dangerous, and it was the main reason the activities have been prohibited.

“It was the feeling of the commission (that) it should stay as it is,” Edinger said. “In other words, ‘No.’”

A yes vote would have given the city the opportunity to draft plans to regulate the water-based businesses that at least two council members think are inevitable.

Over the years, owners of businesses that included floating jungle gyms and hovercrafts have asked the city for permission to use city property as a base camp, but there was no ordinance to regulate them. The city already regulates vendors in designated areas.

“This does not affect the current operations of our current vendors,” Parks and Rec Director Bill Greenwood said.

Council member Dan Gookin said having regulations in place is important for a city built on a lake. Water-based business will come to Coeur d’Alene one day, he said.

“I think it will happen eventually,” Gookin said. “I think it is something that people will expect. There is a lake... eventually there will be something out there.”

Council member Kiki Miller, the other dissenting vote, said acquisition of the Atlas Mill site and its half-mile of shoreline, much of which may be earmarked for public recreation, seems to beg for the regulation of waterborne businesses.

“This is something that eventually has to be addressed,” Miller said. “There is just more and water activities being invented every year ... And we live in a place where that’s part of what is a huge key to our economy.”