BY KAREN BOSSICK

A business park four miles north of Shoshone that has sat vacant for eight years is finally opening with two restaurants, a bar and a thrift store.

And it will celebrate its grand opening from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday, April 22, with live music, a street fair, farmer’s and craft market, laser tag and other children’s activities and raffles.

The renamed Midway, formerly known as the Wild West Business Park, now has the Tumbleweed Café,  which serves farm-to-table sandwiches and other items. It also boasts items from the Building Material Thrift Store in Bellevue.

And Brew and Cue, a Mexican cantina with a convenience store, bar and pool tables, will open on Saturday.

Joining in the celebration will be 12 vendors selling such things as quilts and honey. There’ll be laser tag from noon to 2 p.m., a Twin Blades Axe Throwing Booth, and volunteers with the Lincoln County Youth Center will offer other children’s activities, including a bounce house, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.

There also will be a raffle with drawings every hour. The top prize will be $400 worth of food and gas. Other prizes, sponsored by Ireland and the Crisis Hotline, include gift bags that include $25 gift certificates redeemable at the Building Material Thrift Store and Shoshone bucks that can be redeemed at Shoshone businesses.

Money from raffle tickets will be donated to the Lincoln County Youth Center, said Sterling Davis, who manages the Building Material Thrift Store.

The business park had its groundbreaking in 2005 but was left unfinished in 2006 when construction was halted during a looming recession. It has sat vacant, save for a brief period when a trader sold used furniture there.

Jim Kuehn, associate broker and partner at Coldwell Bankers, bought the park in February 2022. He has spent the past year finishing the roofs, putting in sheetrock and new heating units and addressing other aspects left unfinished.

“I’m trying to provide opportunities for locals to go into business and to better the area to help attract more businesses and people to move to Lincoln County,” he said. “Saturday will be its coming out party.”

A local family recently opened the Tumbleweed Café for lunch and dinner from 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. Tuesdays through Sundays. It’s also open for breakfast on the weekends.

And Susan and Francisco--a second-generation Basque woman and her Hispanic husband--have been busy getting Brew and Cue ready to save residents north of town from having to drive into town for daily incidentals.

Tammy Davis and Sterling Davis are partnering with the owners of the Tumbleweed Café to feature items from the Building Material Thrift Store that the Wood River Land Trust started years ago to recycle refrigerators, cabinets and other items that otherwise might have ended up in the landfill during  remodeling. It’s now located on Bellevue’s Main Street, with proceeds going to the Crisis Hotline.

“We’re getting a lot of donations at the Building Material Thrift Store in Bellevue and it’s not a big place so we needed to turn things away,” said Tammy Davis, executive director of the Crisis Hotline. “I didn’t want to pay for storage so this partnership with Tumbleweed Cafe seemed like a good way to address that problem. It expands the thrift store’s network. It will benefit the Lincoln County Youth Center and  the Crisis Hotline, which serves the whole area. Plus, the Tumbleweed has some awesome, creative sandwiches and homemade soups.”

For more information, visit https://www.restaurantji.com/id/shoshone/the-tumbleweed-cafe-/