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Evergreen School sold to Idaho company;
their plans for the property |
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October 19, 2015 |
The Evergreen School property, located a little
east of the Moyie Bridge, which for the past
several years has been closed as a school and
offered for sale by the school district, sold a
couple of months ago to Triple C Holdings, an
Idaho company. The sale of the property closed
August 26.
The property sold for $300,000. According to
Boundary County School Superintendent Gary
Pflueger, the school district received
$286,499.65 from the purchase price after
deduction of closing costs.
At present, the school district plans to use the
proceeds from the sale for the needs of other
district facilities.
"The money will be used only for
facilities--needs, repairs, additions," said Mr.
Pflueger. "A Facilities Committee is being
formed to help us make informed decisions based
upon a priority list. This committee will advise
the Board. [Our district] has old buildings, and
the cost of upkeep is draining us."
Boundary County School District 101 has a School
Board meeting scheduled for tonight (5:30 p.m.
at Bonners Ferry High School). One of the agenda
items scheduled for tonight's meeting is
"Discussion/Decision on funds from the Sale of
Evergreen Property." Of note, tonight's school
board meeting will be broadcast with live video
on the Boundary County Live website (www.boundarycountylive.com).
(story continues below photo)
It was around the early 1950s that the school
district began looking seriously at adding a new
school building in the eastern part of Boundary
County. The Evergreen property was purchased
from Mr. and Mrs. Frank Struble in June 1952 for
the sum of $250. Construction began in the
summer of 1954.
During construction of the building, it was
informally known as the Curley Creek-Buckhorn
school, but once the building was completed, it
was named Evergreen School
The original school building included two
classroooms, a boiler room, two lavatories, a
janitor's room, and a kitchen, and was built for
a total cost of approximately $43,000 in 1954
dollars (which is around $375,000 in 2015).
Forty-two students were in attendance at the
first day the school was opened for instruction
on the morning of Monday, November 15, 1954. A
formal dedication ceremony for the building was
held December 6, 1954. That event was attended
by over 100 people, and included musical
presentations by a high school group and by
Evergreen students and others, along with the
entire attendance singing the Idaho state song.
Speeches were given by the building's architects
and builders and by William Maas, who at the
time was chairman of the board of school
trustees.
Another speech entitled "The Last (?) Word" was
was given toward the end of the ceremony by
Leonard Kucera, who at the time was trustee of
the Evergreen School zone. His speech was
followed by remarks entitled "A Woman's Reply
(Her's is the Last Word)," given by Evergreen
School principal Clara Hewitt. (It should be
noted that her speech was actually, in fact, the
final speech and last word of the meeting).
Since its original construction, there have been
a few renovations and additions to the building
over the years.
The Evergreen School property was sold to an
Idaho limited liability company called Triple C
Holdings. NewsBF spoke to one of the principals
of that company, a gentleman named Brian Beckle,
who is from Minneapolis, Minnesota.
"We've had a lot of people asking about what is
going on and what we are going to do with
Evergreen," Mr. Beckle said.
He went on to explain that his family is one of
a group of four or five families who hail from
urban areas around the United States, who
decided they wanted to slow down a little and
live a simpler lifestyle. They began looking for
a property that would accommodate what they had
in mind, eventually ended up looking in Idaho,
and finally found what they were looking for in
another property (not the Evergreen property)
located in the Curley Creek area along old
Highway 2.
"It just felt like the right place to be," said
Mr. Beckle.
These families formed Triple C Holdings as a way
to pool their resources and form a legal entity
to make property purchases.
Along with the Curley Creek property, they ended
up also purchasing the Evergreen School
property. For the short term, the famililes plan
to do some renovation at the school, turning it
into a residence for the families where they can
stay until the other Curley Creek property is
ready for them to live there.
In the longer term, once they are established at
their Curley Creek property, they may look at
selling Evergreen, perhaps putting a business
there, or use it as a home school.
Mr. Beckle said his group is well aware that
Evergreen has a lot of ties with the Boundary
County community. He said a lot of people have
stopped by to meet the new owners, to ask
questions about what is going on, and that a
former caretaker of the Evergreen property
visited and shared with him the history of the
school.
He said in their inspection of the building,
they came across many old pictures of Evergreen
School and groups of students, some of the
pictures dating back to 1954. He plans to
contact the Boundary County Museum to see if
they would have an interest in acquiring those
photographs.
As mentioned, Mr. Beckle and his family are from
Minnesota. The other families involved in Triple
C Holdings are from Arizona and from Utah.
The Boundary County area, he said, "felt like
the right place to be."
"We've been really happy," he said. "Quite a few
people have stopped by. It is not our plan to
'live off the grid,' or 'live off the land,' we
want to be part of the community. We are excited
to meet a lot of people." |
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