Walk past 424 East Sherman Avenue this month and you will notice two doors where there used to be one. The familiar entrance, the one generations of North Idaho diners have used since 1985, now opens off Fifth Street into the same worn, oyster-and-cocktail room known as Cricket's. A second door, previously locked and unmarked, opens onto Sherman itself into a completely different restaurant called River & Rye, with a menu that borrows from Spain, France and Italy and leans into craft cocktails rather than pitchers of beer.
Same building. Same ownership. Two restaurants running at once, each with its own front door and its own idea of who's walking through it.
That split is a small thing to notice on a walk downtown, but it tells you something about what's actually happening on Sherman Avenue right now that a list of new restaurant openings would not: the businesses under the most pressure to change aren't the newcomers. They're the ones that have been here the longest.
One Kitchen, Two Front Doors
Cricket's Restaurant & Oyster Bar has been a fixture of downtown Coeur d'Alene for four decades. Rather than open a second location somewhere else in town, the owners chose to carve their existing footprint into two distinct identities. Cricket's kept its Fifth Street entrance and its familiar menu, running Thursday through Sunday starting at 11:30 a.m. while the Sherman-facing half of the building got a full renovation. That half reopened as River & Rye, positioned at a noticeably higher price point than the bar and grill it shares a roof with.
It's an unusual move for a business that doesn't need to prove anything. Cricket's isn't struggling. It's the kind of restaurant new residents get pointed toward within their first month in town. But the owners looked at the same four walls and decided there was a second, different customer they weren't currently serving, one who wanted a cocktail list and a tasting menu rather than a basket of oysters and a pitcher. Instead of choosing between the two audiences, they built a second front door.
That's not what's happening to most of Sherman Avenue's other long-timers.
The Businesses That Didn't Get a Second Act
A few blocks down, Super Silver spent nearly two decades at 414 East Sherman Avenue selling sterling silver jewelry, turquoise and Native American pieces, building a following that started with toe rings at local fairs. In May, the shop announced it was closing for good, with owners Kristy and Mike Chappelear running a retirement sale before shutting the doors on a run that started in October 2009.
A few months earlier, Schmidty's Burgers closed after 12 years at 1524 East Sherman. The space didn't stay empty long. By June 11, Coral Cafe had opened in the same storefront, run by Danny and Celine Griffin, serving a breakfast and lunch menu built on a family recipe that traces back to Danny's grandparents' original Coral Cafe in Burbank, California, in 1957. Danny told the Coeur d'Alene Press he sees it as part of a broader shift happening on that stretch of Sherman:
"We love that we're on a part of Sherman that's undergoing a lot of improvements. It's a nice way for us to be able to contribute to helping keep it a nice area."
Two different endings for two long-running businesses. One reinvented itself without leaving. The other closed outright and was replaced within months by someone new. Neither looks like the slow, steady version of downtown change most residents picture when they think about a street getting nicer over time.
If you're deciding where to eat this week, here's what's actually new and open along that stretch right now:
- River & Rye – craft cocktails and a Spain, France, Italy and Pacific Northwest menu, sharing a building with Cricket's at Sherman and Fifth
- Coral Cafe – breakfast and lunch seven days a week, 6 a.m. to 2 p.m., in the former Schmidty's space at 1524 East Sherman
- Giuseppe's Pasta Posto Osteria – Italian dinner service Tuesday through Saturday, 4 to 9 p.m., in the space that used to be Collective Kitchen at 501 Sherman
- People's Waffle – breakfast and brunch daily, a block off Sherman at 400 North Fourth Street, gluten-free waffles built from a family recipe
Why the Turnover Is Happening All at Once
None of this is a coincidence, and it isn't just a run of good or bad luck for individual owners. It's happening against the backdrop of the biggest vertical construction downtown has seen in its history. City planning officials have described the current building activity, the Thomas George condominium tower at Front and Third, the AC Hotel by Marriott going up at Sixth and Sherman, and Hagadone Hospitality's Sherman Tower expansion of the Coeur d'Alene Resort, as three active cranes working downtown at once.
Sherman Tower alone will add 139 hotel rooms with lake views, plus a 6,000-square-foot restaurant called Azul with a seasonal rooftop bar, in a building that topped off this July at 16 stories. The AC Hotel a few blocks east will bring another 126 rooms when it opens, targeted for early summer 2027. That's hundreds of new overnight guests within walking distance of Sherman's storefronts, on top of whatever foot traffic the Coeur d'Alene Resort already draws.
That kind of demand doesn't distribute evenly. It raises the ceiling on what a well-positioned restaurant can charge and shortens the runway for a shop that's been running on the same margins since 2009. It's also fueling a genuine fight over what downtown should look like. Current zoning allows structures up to 220 feet tall in the core with the right amenity bonuses, but the city's planning commission has floated capping Sherman, Front and Lakeside at 45 feet to protect the historic streetscape and views of Tubbs Hill and the lake. When the city surveyed residents earlier this year, more than 250 people responded and 81% said the height limits deserved a serious review.
Put those two facts together and Sherman Avenue's current churn starts to make more sense. Businesses that can capture higher-spending hotel guests and diners have an incentive to reinvent themselves in place, the way Cricket's did. Businesses running thinner margins on foot traffic alone are more exposed when rent and reinvestment costs climb, which is closer to what happened at Super Silver and Schmidty's. The restaurant turnover isn't random. It's the visible edge of a real estate argument that's still being settled at City Hall.
The Calendar That Still Belongs to Residents
None of that construction touches the parts of downtown that run on their own schedule. The 5th Street Farmers Market sets up every Wednesday from 4 to 7 p.m. through September at Fifth and Sherman, with produce, flowers and pastries from regional vendors. The CDA Flea Market takes over the Museum of North Idaho's grounds on the second and last Sunday of the month through September, with more than 55 vendors selling vintage finds and handmade goods. Those rhythms don't care how many cranes are on the skyline. They're the version of downtown that residents actually use week to week, independent of whichever restaurant is opening or closing on any given block.
That's really the split worth paying attention to here. One version of Sherman Avenue is being built by hotel developers and fought over at planning commission meetings. The other is the one you actually experience on a Wednesday evening at the farmers market or a Sunday morning at Coral Cafe. Both are true at the same time, and neither one is slowing down.
If you're the kind of person who tracks what's changing on your own street corner by corner, that instinct tends to be useful for more than just picking where to eat. Graves Re Group works with buyers and sellers across Coeur d'Alene and the surrounding lake communities, and neighborhood-level detail like this, who's opening where and why, is exactly the kind of local read that shapes good advice when it's time to make a move. If you're curious what any of this means for a home you already own here, Chelsey Graves is glad to talk it through.
