Walk down Sherman Avenue past Fourth Street and you will pass a building that used to have one identity and now has two. Cricket's Restaurant & Oyster Bar has anchored that corner since 1985, oysters and cocktails and the kind of low lighting that makes a Tuesday feel like an occasion. It never closed. But if you look at the Sherman-facing storefront today, the name on the door is different. That is River & Rye, and the story of how it got there tells you more about what is actually changing in downtown Coeur d'Alene than any list of new addresses would.
Jessi and Chad Waldher bought the building at 424 E. Sherman Ave. in September 2025. Rather than tear it down or lease it whole, they gutted the interior to the studs and split the roughly 7,000-square-foot space into two working restaurants. Cricket's kept its footprint at the back of the building, with its own entrance off Fifth Street, and kept doing exactly what it has always done. The Waldhers built a full kitchen and a second bar into the Sherman-facing front and opened River & Rye on August 5.
The concept is not subtle about its inspiration. Chad Waldher has described River & Rye as a craft cocktail bar built around Ernest Hemingway's travels, his time on Idaho's rivers, and his fondness for rye whiskey, with a food menu pulling from Italy, France and Spain. It is an unusual bet for a downtown corner that already has an established identity next door, and it is worth noticing precisely because it is not a new building or a new lot. It is one address deciding it could support two different nights out at once.
Three Other Doors That Actually Opened This Year
The Waldhers' project is the most interesting story, but it is not the only new one. If you have not eaten at any of these yet, here is what has actually opened its doors in Coeur d'Alene since late 2025, not what is still rumored or under construction.
- Twigs Bistro & Martini Bar, 307 E. Front Ave., opened December 15, 2025, on the ground floor of the Thomas George building. It is the chain's first North Idaho location, and the draw is the view: the dining room and patio look out over McEuen Park and the marina. Owner Trevor Blackwell told the Coeur d'Alene Press he wants it to be the place people stop in weekly for an appetizer, not just a special-occasion destination.
- People's Waffle, 400 N. Fourth St., opened May 22. Co-owner Jacy Janson runs it with Alyssa Agee, whose waffle concept started as a food truck in Spokane. The Coeur d'Alene menu carries over six sweet waffles, six savory waffles and four waffle sandwiches, all gluten-free, served for breakfast and brunch seven days a week.
- Raising Cane's, 163 W. Neider Ave., opened March 17. It is the chain's first North Idaho location and its third in the state. Before this opening, the closest Cane's was across the state line in Spokane.
None of these three sit on the postcard stretch of Sherman between First and Fourth. They are a few minutes off it, on Front, on Fourth, on Neider. That is not a coincidence so much as a sign of where there was actually room to build.
The One Everyone's Still Waiting On Isn't Opening This Year
If you drive Riverstone regularly, you have probably clocked the empty lot near the entrance to Riverstone Park at 1570 W. Tilford Lane and wondered when something is finally going in. The Coeur d'Alene Press has run the same line in its recurring business column for months, most recently on September 6: a 7,500-square-foot mixed-use building there is "targeted for completion this summer," with a restaurant space already leased to an undisclosed tenant.
That line has been stale for a while. Daines Capital, the commercial real estate firm behind the project, posted its own account of the timeline earlier this year: the building was slated to break ground in May 2026, with construction wrapping up and tenants taking occupancy in spring 2027. That is a very different calendar than "this summer," and it means the restaurant everyone in Riverstone has been anticipating is closer to a year out than a matter of weeks. If you have been checking that corner every time you drive past, you can stop checking until next year.
It is a small correction, but it matters if you actually live near there. The gap between what a recurring news column keeps repeating and what the developer itself has posted is the kind of detail that only shows up if you go past the headline and check the project page directly.
What's Actually Worth Putting On The Calendar
New restaurants aside, the next two weekends are stacked, and they do not overlap the way you might expect.
Tonight, September 11, is ArtWalk, the second Friday of the month, when more than a dozen downtown galleries and shops stay open late for browsing and live demonstrations. Immersive Studio CDA on Coeur d'Alene Avenue is usually one of the stops worth making, with refreshments and music on top of the art.
Tomorrow, September 12, is a genuine scheduling conflict. Riverstone Block Party & Brewfest runs at The Village at Riverstone starting at 1 p.m., the same day as the Parade of Homes and a 5 a.m. Tunnel to Towers 5K downtown. Pick your morning carefully if you are doing more than one.
The weekend after, September 18 through 20, three separate things are happening at once. Downtown Coeur d'Alene's Oktoberfest takes over more than 30 participating businesses along the main drag for a self-guided crawl of German-style beers and ciders. At the same time, the Coeur d'Alene Resort is running Whiskey Barrel Weekend, with a live-fire cooking experience called Fuego & Oak, whiskey masterclasses, and a Grand Whiskey Tasting featuring more than 50 pours. And September 20 is also the last day to ride the Hiawatha before it closes for the season, which matters if you have been meaning to get out there while the crowds are thinner and the fall air has cooled the trail down.
None of these compete directly with each other in terms of format, a beer crawl, a whiskey weekend, and a mountain bike trail are different enough activities that you could plausibly do all three across two days. But they do compete for your calendar, and if you were planning to wait until "sometime in the fall" to ride the Hiawatha, this is the actual deadline.
What This Adds Up To
The easy version of this story is "a lot of new restaurants opened in Coeur d'Alene this year," and that much is true. But the more useful version is that the growth is not concentrated in new buildings going up. It is existing footprints getting reorganized, a 40-year-old restaurant giving up half its floor plan to a new concept rather than closing, a condo building's ground floor becoming the neighborhood's best lake view, a former food truck operator opening a storefront two blocks off the main drag. The building at Riverstone that everyone assumed would be the next big opening is the one project actually running behind, not ahead.
If you have lived here through a few summers, none of this replaces Sherman Avenue. It just means there are more reasons to walk a block or two past it before you decide where dinner is happening.
Citrine Properties CDA keeps tabs on this kind of detail because it is the same local knowledge that shapes property decisions for owners, whether that is a rental a few blocks from Riverstone or a home near enough to McEuen to hear the concerts on a Wednesday night. If you own property in the area and want to talk through what any of this means for you, Citrine Properties CDA is owner-operated by Lance and Chelsea Hosea, and a conversation with them starts the same way it always has: directly, with the people who actually run the place.
