City says treehouse must come down

If you Google "tremain albright treehouse," you'll have your choice of 20,900 websites from around the world to find out that a Bonners Ferry man will lose what is perhaps the coolest treehouse in North Idaho, if not the entire state, because the tree it sits in, while on private property, is in the wrong place.

Tremain Albright, who owns property along the Kootenai River within the city limits of Bonners Ferry city, has been working on that treehouse a little at a time for years. The treehouse grew, and what now overlooks the river isn't your run-of-the-mill "boys only ... no girls allowed" kids' treehouse ...it's a unique structure fit for guests.

That's what he planned to use it for, a guest house.

As it began taking shape a few years ago, Tremain recognized that his project was more substantial than most treehouses, and that it might have grown to the point where a permit might be required. With due diligence, he made the rounds people normally do when building a habitable structure. He visited county planning and zoning, to be told that this project fell under city jurisdiction.

Had it been outside city limits, he was told, the county wouldn't require any kind of permit at all.

He then went to Bonners Ferry building officials, who work with more stringent land use regulations, and was informed that he'd need a city-issued variance, a grant of relief from measurable land use rules such as setback, structure size or lot size requirements.

In 2007, after public hearing, thecity granted that permit, and Tremain began building in earnest, eventually spending over $14,000 to make it something a guest would look forward to staying in.

"It's very special," Tremain told a reporter, "there's probably not another one like it in the state of Idaho."

What he didn't know when going through the permit process, however, is that sometimes one permit just isn't enough, especially in Boundary County, where more than 75-percent of the land base is under federal or state control. While local development almost always takes place on private land, there are many regulatory agencies that have rules and require permits.

The Environmental Protection Agency, the Federal Emergency Management Agency are the ones that apply to land use most often, but in Tremain's case it was the Army Corps of Engineers that had the regulations and in this case no permit that can be issued as it's the tree causing the problem ... were it or several others to fall, they could damage the dike that protects the city from flooding.

Therefore, the Corps ruled, the trees must come down, and the treehouse, too.

If they don't, the Corps said, they would withhold more than $120,000 in federal funding that would go to the city for levy maintenance.

Tremain tried fighting it, but there was nothing he could do, and on Friday, the Corps plans to send out a crew to begin remove the offending trees, along with a treehouse that grew to be much more than a simple fort.

"I still feel like this is just an action of big government," Tremain told a reporter. "We were totally helpless. The city's helpless, and they are pretty much held under the gun.