Design awards should soon be flowing in the direction of The Flying Goat, the new north Spokane neighborhood pub in the Audubon Park area. (Exact address: 3318 W. Northwest Blvd.)

The neighborhood restaurant used a handsome selection of recycled wood to put together the floor, the bar (in picture, below) window frames and some of the outside slats. That wood came from a circa 1910 grain elevator erected in Ritzville.  As Spokesman Review Food Editor Lori Hutson noted in a food section story, " A picture of the original building, constructed in 1910, hangs on the pub wall near the front entrance."

We want to bring additional attention to ReHistoric Wood Products, at 715 E. Sprague, a Spokane business that was a key piece of the reclamation project.

ReHistoric's Bruce Johnson was hired by the family owning the grain elevator. In early 2009 Johnson managed to bring down the sturdy elevator, made of Douglas Fir. After bringing the wood to Spokane, nails had to be pulled before the lumber could be milled for its next owner.

For the Flying Goat project, Johnson hired Post Falls-based Aagesen Millworks to mill the wood into the pieces needed by Goat owner Jonathan Sweatt.

Johnson said he's used the grain elevator wood, originally built for farmer Otis Leonard, for a number of other projects. See his company website for more links. He's got about 10,000 board feet of the elevator wood left, about 15 percent of the amount brought out of Ritzville, he said.

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