Tree house comes down
After
months of controversy, a contracting crew hired
by the City of Bonners Ferry showed up at the
riverfront home of Tremain Albright and Adara
Dancer Thursday and took down a tree house that
garnered global attention earlier this summer,
along with the tree it once sat in.In early June, the Army Corps of Engineers determined that the tree holding the $14,000 tree house, one of several big cottonwoods on the dike along the Kootenai River in Bonners Ferry, posed a threat to the dike system and threatened to withhold federal flood prevention monies from the city if the tree and the house, being used as a guest house, didn't come down.
Albright had been working on the unique tree house for years, a little bit at a time, and he said he realized that he might need a permit in 2007, when it started shaping up into more than your typical tree house. He said he received a permit from the city that year after a public hearing, something the city denies.
Rather than lose the more than $160,000 in federal funding the city stood to gain this year for dike maintenance and repair, the mayor and city council decided the tree house had to go, and allowed Albright and Dancer until July 15 to clear out their belongings.
The controversy that ensued over private property rights versus public safety was picked up by media outlets around the world, most with Albright and Dancer characterized as the underdogs facing off against an implacable big government, but the plot thickened when a survey paid for by the city showed that at least a portion of the property in question belonged not to the two homeowners, but to the City of Bonners Ferry.
With that, the city set a date of August 1 for demolition, but unusually high river levels forced postponement of the project until August 23, when the river level and bank condition stabilized enough to allow the work.
In a statement, Bonners Ferry Mayor Dave Anderson acknowledged Albright and Dancer's "affection for their creation," but that demolition was "the right action to protect the safety of our citizens."
Neither Albright nor Dancer were available for comment.