Turner lodge under construction

By Paul Boring Western News Reporter

With the help of countless volunteers, the new lodge at Turner Mountain is inching closer to completion every day.

³The exterior walls are framed and trusses will come in this week,² said Bruce Zwang, Kootenai Winter Sports president. ³Once they arrive and are set, the roof will go on.

³The project¹s moving forward at a very quick pace. We¹re excited and happy to be in the building phase,² Zwang added. ³We¹re starting to see progress on a daily basis.²

Project Manager Lonnie Hansen has been running a tight ship, Zwang said, helping the project move along smoothly.

³Lonnie has put tons of hours into the project, as have a number of individuals. Something¹s happening every day up there.²

The immediate goal is to complete the roof before inclement weather hits Lincoln County.

³We had hoped to be at this point earlier in the season, but we¹re making steady progress and we want to get the roof on as quick as possible, so we¹re out of the weather,² Zwang said. ³The pressure will be off once the roof is on. Then it will be weathered in. And then we¹re not dependent on the weather.²

The competent work crew shuffling the schedule at Turner has been successful at working around the delays implicit in constructing a facility like the new lodge.

³The schedule¹s changing as we¹re moving because of one thing slowing another thing down,² Zwang said. ³We¹re constantly moving it around. And there was a tremendous amount of work completed this summer and last summer to enable us to this. That¹s why we¹re able to see this phenomenal progress.²

In addition to the lodge construction, the parking lot at Turner is being resurfaced through funding provided by the Lincoln County Resource Advisory Committee.

³That¹s really looking great, too,² Zwang said. ³Everything¹s coming together.²

Volunteers have literally kept Turner running over the years. The current project at the co-op ski hill is no exception.

³We got the funding two weeks ago and boom, we¹ve almost got a roof on it,² Zwang said. ³This is a volunteer project. We¹re saving an incredible amount of money by using volunteers. That¹s the beauty of Turner Mountain. It always has been.²