Fourth Street's Night Out Is Being Rebuilt This Fall, and One Liquor License Explains Most of It

Inside a brick storefront on South Fourth Street, Michael Goggin has been sanding wooden boards while his mother, Sandi, stains them behind him. Goggin, 29, owns The Beacon, the bar his father, Jerry, opened in 2006. The building he's working in opened in 1939 as the 600-seat Roxy Theater. Since then it has been a hardware store, an auto body shop and Wiggett's Antiques, and in 2024 it served as a temporary home for the Museum of North Idaho. Goggin's next step for the building is Kickers, a country-western dance hall with room for just under 400 people. The plans call for a big stage, several bars and a new sound system, with line dancing, two-stepping and ticketed shows, according to the Coeur d'Alene Press.

Kickers will run on a liquor license that spent years leased to Mik's, the basement bar and nightclub on North Fourth Street. It belongs to the downtown business that has done the most to reshape Coeur d'Alene's night scene in 2026, even though it isn't a nightlife company. That business is Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 889.

The license behind 28 years of Mik's

Mik's ran in the basement below the VFW post on North Fourth Street for nearly three decades. It closed for good on February 14, 2026, after a final Mardi Gras-themed night. Mik's had always leased both its space and its liquor license from the VFW. The Coeur d'Alene Press reported in February that a 2023 change in state law made that arrangement impossible to keep going. The owner had signed a three-year contract after the law passed, and that contract was running out. With licenses scarce and expensive in Coeur d'Alene, keeping the bar open no longer made sense.

The law is Senate Bill 1120, signed March 30, 2023, and in effect since July 1, 2023. Idaho caps liquor-by-the-drink licenses by population. In cities the bill text sets the quota at one license per 1,500 residents, with some exceptions. The statement of purpose says that cap "unintentionally" created a speculative market in licenses, and the bill was written to shut that market down.

One sale, then the license stays put

Here is how the bill treats licenses. Quota licenses issued on or after July 1, 2023, can't be sold, leased or moved to another location. Licenses issued before that date get a single sale or transfer on or after it, and then they can't be transferred again. A license that was leased out before July 2023 goes back to its owner when the lease ends, and the owner can then use that one transfer.

The VFW's license is old. According to the post, it's the second-oldest liquor license Idaho ever issued, and the VFW itself was founded in 1922. When the Mik's lease ended, the license went back to Post 889. The post sold it, and Goggin was the buyer. As the statute is written, that sale was the license's one remaining transfer.

That's why this year's changes downtown are probably the lasting version. Under the old system a license could be leased to one bar after another until it landed somewhere new. Under SB 1120, an old license makes one last move and then stays where it lands. The Fourth Street night scene that takes shape this winter is the one the street is likely to keep.

Three buildings, three handoffs

The license accounts for two of the three big changes. The third is a block over on Sherman Avenue, and it came about through an ordinary business sale, without any license trading.

The Patriot Bar. Post 889 used the money from the license sale to pay for a top-to-bottom remodel without taking out loans. After years of planning and volunteer work, the post gutted the old Mik's space and hauled away nearly 25 containers of debris, according to the Hagadone News Network. Jeremy Glenwinkel, an Army and Marine Corps veteran, built the bar and donated his labor. Patches, coins and artifacts cover the walls, and there's a remembrance wall and a missing-man table. Plans include Wine Wednesdays, live music, and pool and dart tournaments, with a house-made menu from the kitchen. Callie Kellogg, a Coeur d'Alene native, manages the bar. All revenue stays with the post, and about 300 combat veterans vote on how it's spent. Having sold its hard-liquor license, the post plans to apply for a club license so members and guests can order full spirits again.

Kickers. Goggin told the Press the building will have a main rectangular bar as its centerpiece, as The Beacon does less than a block north. He wants it to be a regular stop for touring musicians as well as a stage for local bands. Building owner David Montandon said the deal came together between two Coeur d'Alene families, without outside brokers. Goggin's father had been a longtime customer at Montandon's hardware store. The Beacon has 15 to 16 employees, and Goggin expects a combined staff of 30 to 35 once Kickers opens. He plans to start hiring once he has a firm opening date, and he doesn't have one yet.

Sherman Avenue is filling the late-night hours

River and Rye brings downtown a kitchen that serves food late into the evening. The block of Sherman between Fourth and Fifth has been busy since Coeur d'Alene built its first city hall there in 1908. Last September Jessi and Chad Waldher bought Crickets, gutted it in December and spent seven months on the buildout. River and Rye opened in July with about 90 seats inside and a dozen or so on the patio. Guests must be 21 or older.

The Inlander reports that the kitchen stays open as long as the bar does. Strong demand for late-night food led the owners to expand from five nights a week to seven by the end of October. The listed hours had been Wednesday through Saturday, 3 to 11 p.m., and Sunday, 3 to 10 p.m., with happy hour from 3 to 5. The back bar carries about 100 bourbons and ryes and roughly 50 other whiskeys. The food includes veal and chorizo albondigas for $15 and croquettes fried in duck fat for $16, and the bread comes from Back Pocket Bakery. The Waldhers are also working on a second restaurant in the connected space at 424 E. Sherman Ave., which they expect to open next spring.

Taken together, downtown is heading into winter with a 200-seat veterans' event space on North Fourth, a dance hall on South Fourth that hopes to open in December, and a cocktail kitchen on Sherman serving food seven nights a week. A year ago the same three addresses held Mik's, an underused storefront and Crickets.

The holiday stretch, with new stops in between

The first test of the new lineup will be the holiday calendar, which puts the biggest crowds of the season on these same blocks:

• November 7, 1 to 6 p.m. Wine for the Holidays. Downtown shops pour wine tastings and offer live music, free gift wrapping and prize drawings.
• November 13 to 25. Santa's Sneak Peek Week on the Resort's Journey to the North Pole cruises, at 25% off. Regular cruises run November 26 through January 3, and boarding is at The Resort Plaza Shops, 115 S. 2nd St.
• November 27, 5 p.m. The Downtown Association's 34th Annual Lighting Ceremony Parade runs west on Sherman from 8th Street to Government Way and Northwest Boulevard. Fireworks and the switch-on of more than 1.5 million lights follow. Cars parked on Sherman must be moved by 1 p.m.
• November 27 to December 20. "My Favorite Things," the Resort's Christmas show.

The parade passes the Fourth Street corner and the 400 block of Sherman, so on Lighting Ceremony night, River and Rye and The Patriot Bar will be a short walk from the route. Kickers could be open in time if its permits come through, though for now December is still a target.

At Robert Jacobs II & Associates, we keep track of which downtown buildings are changing hands and what's moving in, because that shapes the blocks around them. If you own a home near downtown Coeur d'Alene and want to know how this year's changes on Fourth and Sherman could affect its value, request a free home valuation.