Everybody knows that Post Falls has been booming, but just how much has the once-sleepy North Idaho city grown this decade?


Regional economist Kathryn Tacke set out to answer that question in an essay published in the Idaho state Department of Commerce & Labors November newsletter. In her essay, Tacke says the number of businesses operating in Post Falls jumped 36 percent, to 930, between 2000 and last year. During that period, jobs grew 44 percent to 10,600, she says. The city now has a population of more than 24,000, compared with roughly 17,250 in 2000 and just 7,350 in 1990.


Ive been aware since the 1990s that Post Falls time had come, Tacke said in an interview. I was struck by all that was happening there and decided it was worth creating a cumulative look at those developments.


In the last decade, the health-care industry in Post Falls particularly has blossomed, with health-care-related jobs growing to nearly 900 last year from 320 in 2000 and 100 in 1996, she writes. The growth in that sector has been due largely to the opening of two specialty hospitals and several medical clinics and offices in Post Falls, she says.


Tacke expects at least 300 more jobs will be created in the sector in the next two years, thanks in part to Kootenai Medical Centers planned satellite cancer center there and a $40 million senior housing facility that Life Care Centers of America is building. Tacke classifies the Life Care jobs as within the health-care sector because the facility will include a nursing center as well as an assisted-living center.


Growth in Post Falls, along with growth in the rest of Kootenai County, is expected to cool slightly this year, but still will reach above-average levels, especially in the area of commercial construction, Tacke says. She points to several planned projects that will fuel job growth there for years to come.


For instance, says Post Falls Mayor Clay Larkin, Cabelas Inc. plans to open a 125,000-square-foot store next fall in part of a planned 800,000-square-foot retail development that eventually is expected to create 3,000 jobs and attract 2 million visitors a year.


Larkin says he and his wife have lived in Post Falls for nearly 40 years, watching as the tiny community grew from a population of 1,200.


Asked whether he had ever thought Post Falls would grow as it has in the last decade, Larkin says, Not in my wildest imagination. But, weve been discovered.


He says its important to take a cumulative look back at the growth thats taken place to learn how the citys government could have dealt with that growth better, and apply those lessons to future planning efforts.


Were looking for ways to better manage the growth, he says. Its a great time, and we do our best to keep up.


Monte Risvold, director of commercial real estate at Spokane-based Re/Max of Spokane, has been working in the Coeur dAlene area as a broker for 15 years, and also thinks its important to conduct macro studies of an areas growth to gain a more accurate perspective of short-term dips.


Risvold says he considers last year a flushing period in which the over-heated housing market of 2005 adjusted back down to healthier levels. Through the first 10 months of 2006, some 2,041 homes were sold in Kootenai County, down 29 percent from the year-earlier period. Home sales volume through October was $487 million, down 18.6 percent.


If you just look at these anomalies, like in 05 and 06, then all the doomsayers say were in trouble, Risvold says. We have people investing in some long-term projects who obviously think the growth is going to continue and are putting their money where their mouth is.


For example, Tullamore Properties LLC, which is managed by Vision First LLC, of Eagle, Idaho, is developing a 300-acre, multiuse project west of state Route 41 between Poleline and Prairie avenues, Risvold says. Infrastructure work for that project is almost done, and model homes are expected to rise this winter, he says.


In another large-scale multiuse project, Spokane developer Harry Green is building The Landing at Post Falls, a 34-acre mixed-use development on the north bank of the Spokane River. Two, 20-unit condominium buildings have been completed there and a 47-unit condo building is planned to rise soon, Tacke says. Eventually, the development is to include 120,000 square feet of retail space, 260,000 square feet of office space, 530 condo units, and an amphitheater, she says.


Meanwhile, Spokane-based Biopol Laboratory Inc. has said it plans to move by early 2009 to a 45,000-square-foot facility it plans to build at the Riverbend Commerce Park in Post Falls, Tacke says. The company, which employs 24 now at the two operations in Spokane that it intends to move to Post Falls, expects to add up to 25 employees within the next five years.


Post Falls might not be growing quite at the incredible way it was, but definitely in a way that changes the town itself, Tacke says. It still has relatively inexpensive land, more so than Coeur dAlene, and its still in a really great position.


Contact Emily Brandler at (509) 344-1265 or via e-mail at emilyb@spokanejournal.com.