A Canadian developer has requested a zone change from Kootenai County to make way for an envisioned subdivision and golf course on 227 acres overlooking Arrow Point, on Lake Coeur dAlene.


Little information about the company, Fortress LLC, is available yet. Coeur dAlene attorney Robert Fasnacht is listed as the companys representative, but couldnt be reached for comment.


The land Fortress wants to develop is located along state Route 97, across that highway and uphill from Lake Coeur dAlene and about eight winding miles of road south of the junction of Route 97 and Interstate 90, east of Coeur dAlene.


Rand Wichman, director of Kootenai Countys building and planning departments, says the county conducted a public hearing late last month on Fortress LLCs zone-change request, which seeks to change the zoning on the property from agricultural to rural residential.


A county hearing examiner is expected to make a recommendation soon on the request, which then will be forwarded to the Kootenai County commissioners.


Fortress, which Wichman says owns the 227-acre site, hasnt submitted development plans to the county. He says, however, that in meetings with county officials, the company has talked of developing up to 300 lots for single-family homes, bordering on a new golf course. If the zone change were approved, such a development would need to go through the planned-unit development approval process, so it would be a number of months before development would actually start at the site.


In oral testimony at the hearing and written testimony submitted to the county, about 40 people commented on the request, and roughly 15 of them opposed it, Wichman says.


The proposed development site is situated on a bluff about 500 feet above Lake Coeur dAlene. Just north and down the hill from that site is the lakeside Arrow Point Resort condominium complex.


In 1996, Arrow Point Development Co., a Coeur dAlene company that developed Arrow Point, announced plans to build a golf course on the land that Fortress now owns and has proposed for its development. Wichman says the county issued a conditional-use permit to Arrow Point for that project, but it never got under way, and the permit eventually expired.