Downtown Coeur d'Alene nearly full as business success ranks 14th nationally

Only two downtown Coeur d'Alene commercial spaces are empty, a sign of how tight the market has become in the city’s core and why the downtown business district is being watched as a barometer for Kootenai County’s economy.

The downtown Business Improvement District covers about 250 retail and restaurant sites across a 22-block area from roughly Eighth Street north to Indiana Avenue and out to Government Way and Lakeside Avenue, with The Coeur d’Alene Resort and the lake forming the southern edge. In that footprint, the vacancy rate was reported at just 0.4%, a figure that puts downtown among the most fully occupied small-city retail districts in the country.

Emily Boyd, executive director of the Coeur d’Alene Downtown Association, said the district had no major holes in its storefront lineup and that demand has only increased. During the pandemic, she said, inquiries for downtown retail space came in daily, a surge that showed how much pressure there was to get a place on Sherman Avenue and nearby blocks before the market tightened further.

The scarcity matters for more than landlords. For shoppers, it means a busier street life and fewer dark storefronts. For would-be entrepreneurs, it means less room to test an idea downtown unless they can move quickly and pay for prime frontage. The flip side is that a near-full district can also keep downtown’s mix from getting stale, because the spaces that do open are likely to be filled fast.

The same momentum helped Coeur d’Alene earn another distinction: a Co-working Cafe study ranked it 14th among 179 small U.S. metros for small-business success. The study said local small businesses and restaurants had a 90.2% survival rate this year. KXLY also reported that the city’s GDP grew 53.9% between 2019 and 2023, underscoring how fast the local economy has expanded alongside the retail market.

Beth Rich, owner of Mix It Up Home and Mix It Up Gift and a downtown business owner for eight years, said the city’s strength comes from both residents and visitors who keep spending downtown. That support has come amid broader regional growth. The Coeur d’Alene Regional Chamber of Commerce has said the area’s population has grown by more than 11% in recent years, alongside low unemployment and strong expansion in construction, healthcare and technology.

Downtown’s business base is also being reinforced by the association’s daily upkeep. Its annual Flags & Flowers program places 170 flower baskets and 70 American flags downtown at a cost of about $25,000, an effort that keeps storefront blocks bright through the busy season.

Office vacancy in the district is higher than retail, but still far below the roughly 20% office vacancy reported in downtown Spokane. The pattern suggests Coeur d’Alene’s downtown is not just busy, but hard to enter, a strength that may define the next phase of growth as much as the storefronts already filled.