In February 2012 it was reported that Pulman's Hilltop Hotel expansion includes demolition of the Hilltop Restaurant

Info based on story in Feb. 29, 2012, City of Pullman Planning Department Newsletter:

Photo from City of Pullman shows Hilltop restaurant with red and black sign Caption: The proposed hotel expansion involves the demolition of the Hilltop Restaurant (shown on the left) to make way for 54 additional sleeping rooms.

HILLTOP INN RESUBMITS EXPANSION PLANS

In June of 2010, we reported that the Kirkbride Group of Lacey, Washington

had submitted a site plan review application to the public works department for a proposal to expand the Hilltop Inn located at the corner of Davis Way and Old Wawawai Road.

The plan involved the addition of 54 rooms to the existing 59-room, three-story motel. To provide the necessary space for this addition, the 10,000-square-foot building that contains the Hilltop Restaurant was proposed to be demolished. The applicant and city staff engaged in the iterative site plan review process until November of that year when staff sent a letter requesting correction of certain deficiencies in the proposed construction drawings.

On Feb. 13, 2012, after putting the proposal on hold for more than a year, the applicant resubmitted its site plan, and followed up soon thereafter with the provision of building plans (necessary for the issuance of a building permit).

The city’s site plan review committee met last week to consider the site plan resubmittal, and it has notified the applicant of certain deficiencies in the plan. However, if all goes smoothly, the developer intends to start the demolition and construction work at the site later this year.

Info below based on story in June 2010, City of Pullman Planning Department Newsletter:

Photo from City of Pullman shows front of Hilltop Restaurant. Caption: The Hilltop Restaurant has been serving patrons since the mid-1960s.

HILLTOP RESTAURANT TO BE DEMOLISHED FOR MOTEL ADDITION

In June 2010, the Kirkbride Group of Lacey, Washington submitted a site plan review application to the public works department for a proposal to expand the Hilltop Inn located at the corner of Davis Way and Old Wawawai Road.

The plan involves the addition of 54 rooms to the existing 59-room, three-story motel. To provide the necessary space for this addition, the 10,000-square-foot building that contains the Hilltop Restaurant is proposed to be demolished.

According to the city’s building division records, a restaurant has been in place at this site (accompanying a motel) since 1954. Back then, the eating establishment was a small drive-in restaurant and ice cream shop. The Hilltop Restaurant structure that we know today was built by then-owner Al Kircher in 1965.

Over the years, the business has been called Kircher’s Steakhouse, Hilltop Café, and Hilltop Steakhouse, until it took on its current name in the late 1970s. Ron and Barbara Wachter, long-standing owners of the motel and restaurant property, are maintaining their ownership interest in the motel facility throughout the redevelopment process.

The city’s site plan review committee has met to consider the site plan for this proposal, and it has notified the applicant of certain deficiencies in the plan. If all goes smoothly, the developer intends to start the demolition and construction work at the site late this summer.

ADDITIONAL INFO ABOUT HILLTOP RESTAURANT:

==“My best recollection is that when Templin bought the Hilltop back in the 70's, (the purple chairs at the Hilltop) came from the Old Coeur d'Alene hotel, which (Robert) Templin owned before he went to Post Falls (and opened the North Shore resort which had a) nice restaurant on the 9th floor called the Cloud 9 and those chairs were there....” – A knowledgeable person told Cup of the Palouse on Sept. 9, 2010.

Photo of one of the Hilltop Restaurant's famous purple chairs by Pullman :: Cup of the Palouse.

Al Kircher was head football coach of WSU, 1952-55.

==In the year 1955, "Head coach Al Kircher’s tenure came to a close following a forgettable 1-7-2 campaign.... Kircher concluded his Cougar coaching career 13-25-2. He used the money from the buyout of his contract to purchase what would become an icon on the Palouse culinary scene: The Hilltop Steakhouse. -- By Greg Witter, Cougfan.com executive editor in article "The Fascinating Fifties" posted on July 24, 2002.

==Following the Nov. 1, 2004, death of Al Kircher, age 94, in Salem, Ore., WSU Athletics issued a news release on Dec. 8, 2004. It includes: "Following his resignation as Washington State's head football coach, Kircher and his family remained in Pullman, where they owned and operated the Hilltop Motel and Steakhouse from 1954-75. They retired to Las Vegas in 1976 and earlier this year moved to Salem."

==In a joint venture with H. F. Magnuson and Associates, Robert Templin purchased Al Kircher’s Hilltop Motel and Steakhouse in Pullman. Story says the motel, with 17-units is "perched on the west side of Pullman with an expansive view of the city.” Story says,“within a few years” Templin “plans to build a new structure on the three-acre site, with more than 200 motel rooms and a convention center.” Source: Lewiston Morning Tribune, Jan. 23, 1977.

Wooden drying rack made in Eugene

Jim Stinson book remembers the 'B' basketball tourney in Spokane fulfills its goal

Blanchette: Stinson’s “Remembering the B” fulfills its goal

Printed Feb. 18, 2012, in Spokane S-R. By John Blanchette

There are 400,000-some words in his book and even the most devoted reader may not have the capacity to digest them all.

But Jim Stinson didn’t get any as precise, as right, as the ones on the cover:

Remembering the B.

Because that’s what it is – a basketball and social history, yes, but also a paean to a phenomenon now past, and never to return.

Is that why the Washington Intercollegiate Activities Association declined to let him sell copies at the State 1B/2B tournaments here next month – because it’s a reminder of something so perfect that the educrats simply screwed up?

Oh, it’s probably not anything that sinister. But it’s just as misguided.

Stinson’s lovingly told (and copiously illustrated) tale is a tribute to everything good to be found in a high school institution – the soul of rural America (that bigger-city private schools strove to emulate), careers of service by coaches who became symbols of their towns, families whose heritage is marked generationally by their contributions to the basketball team. Also the givens: drama, excitement and opportunity for excellence and achievement.

But mostly the stories.

“Remembering the B” is full of them, extended features setting off the year-by-year chapters that detail the outcome of every boys and girls State B tournament – and, OK, even the first four of the 2B variety when the WIAA split the event in half in 2007.

“There must have been 40 that got left on the cutting room floor,” said Stinson. “There’s enough for another book. But I don’t want to hear (from his grandkids), ‘Papa, when are you going to be done with your book?’ anymore.”

But naturally B characters like Bull Tenoski – the Willapa Valley coach who looked just like his name – made the cut. So did the saga of the 1967 Reardan bank robbery. The family histories – the Wiitalas, the Solidays, the Bannishes. The incredible 82-game Brewster winning streak.

And the photos go beyond basketball to find the tick of the little towns – former B star Monica Van Riper and father Harold displaying the salmon catch from their family charter business in Clallam Bay, or John Thulean and father Gail playing H-O-R-S-E in the second-floor gym in their La Conner dairy barn. Naselle coaching legend Lyle Patterson is shown getting a medal for combat service.

There is no one more steeped in the tradition of the B – as author, historian, coach, parent and aficionado – than Stinson.

He published his first effort, “Tournament Fever,” in the mid-1970s, and an update a few years later. Then life and three children (all B players) took over.

But he never stopped collecting stories.

A couple he lived as a coach – state titles with daughter Jennifer at Davenport, and the electric 50-point performance from his Northwest Christian star, who was fighting a losing battle with cancer.

“That’s the longest story in the book,” he confessed.

Hey, it’s his book.

Summers he would haul himself and his family to the state library in Olympia and all the little towns he wanted to write about. A logger might lay a picture on him. In Fairfield, he’d stumble upon the family of a long-deceased coach of a state champion 300 miles away.

“The connections you learn about by accident – that kind of stuff gets me excited,” he admitted.

The detail is excruciating – there are 12,986 player names in the index, every one who made a box score up through 2012. But it’s almost exhilarating, too. He tracked down – or created – logos for 304 participant teams, including swiping the mule from the old “Barney Google” cartoon strip to represent the long-gone Edison Sparkplugs.

He even induced author Sherman Alexie, whose basketball roots at Reardan are an important element of his work, to do the forward – and republished his poem about Indians coach Gene Smith.

“It used to be up in Smith Gym, but they took it down when they painted,” Stinson said. “So I called and asked Gene if he would recite it to me.”

Smith’s response: “This is embarrassing.”

Selling 3,000 books – the print run is 5,000 – would allow Stinson to break even on his obsession, and that’s not an insignificant motive. But it’s hardly the only one.

“Nobody is going to know the difference pretty soon,” he said. “Changes are made that most people don’t want but the government wants them made – the government in this case being the WIAA. Once you keep on with the new way, you forget the old way.

“High school kids now were in sixth grade when the B went away. I’d like them to know about how it was.”

And he’d like the rest of us to remember.