Shamus's Sandwiches to open in former Buckhorn

By PAUL DELANEY

Staff Reporter

The former Buckhorn Inn in Airway Heights will reopen soon with a new name.

Shawn Reilly from Spokane, along with partner in the building, Cheney's Steve Emtman, purchased the iconic restaurant from Noreen and Gary Pederson last November and will reopen it as the third Shamus's Sandwich Shoppe, hopefully by early July.

Currently Reilly has locations in Spokane Valley at Sprague and Havana - in a former Baskin-Robbins ice cream shop - and on Pines Road between Mission and Broadway Avenue. He opened his original location eight years ago and Pines four years later.

"I said Steve, 'I'm trying to go out to Airway Heights, and every lease I looked at was ridiculous,'" Reilly said.

While the exterior of the log structure - originally built in 1951 by Al and Eve Musser, but once leveled by a fire and rebuilt - remains much the same, the interior will have a decidedly different look.

"We're trying to do the best we can to keep it like it was, (but) it's just difficult, you have an older building," Reilly said.

The interior has been lightened with the addition of sheetrock on the walls and painting the ceiling white. The sandwich shop will occupy the restaurant side of the old restaurant. The Buckhorn location will be three times the size of his original store. For now the old bar will remain a project for the future, Reilly said, and separated by a rolling door made of barn-wood.

"We're not a pub," Reilly said, but they do serve both tap and bottled beer, plus wine. Kids can sit at the bar.

What led Reilly to Airway Heights was what is driving others - growth of population. "We liked the fact that there were industries out there, along with the (Fairchild) Air Force base," Reilly said.

The search for that specific market is based on the success Reilly said he has experienced at the Sprague store. "Right here, we do a lot of industry (business); guys will come in because we're fast," Reilly said.

What also differentiates him is, "It's meat and cheese; our small's are a quarter-pound of meat and cheese; our large is a half-pound," Reilly said. "So you're not getting a bread and veggie sandwich," he added.

Reilly explained his interest in serving up a classic sandwich this way. "My dad (Ken) was an old Air Force guy from Brooklyn so it's a big old deli sandwich like you get in New York," Reilly added.

"We're going to be like Domini's with vegetables," Reilly said referencing the classic downtown Spokane deli.

Reilly, 58, worked 20 years for ABF trucking as a district sales manager. Often trying to escape the office to fill out daily reports, he sought out a spot where he could work and that's where the idea for Shamus's came from. The name comes from his twin brother and a son of the same name. His son, Dalton Reilly will manage Airway while his brother will stay at Pines.

His friendship with Emtman goes back years, and Reilly likes to joke with the former University of Washington and Cheney High star football player.

Reilly and his brother, both grads of Franklin-Pierce High School in Tacoma, are Eastern Washington University alums and played football players in the early 1980s for Dick Zornes.

"Steve (Emtman) was about 11 and went to the Eastern games," Reilly recounted with Emtman sitting close by. "He looked down on the field and saw No. 90 (Reilly's number) and said, 'I want to be just like that guy, I want to be No. 90," Reilly said. To which Zornes reportedly told him, "You're not good enough to be an Eagle."

Reilly's past travels are similar to those of the typical globetrotting Air Force families, with stops including Japan, Hawaii, Virginia, Texas, South Dakota and on, finishing things as so many do, at Fairchild. Reilly was born in Wichita Falls, Texas. The Airway Heights location will also have a memorial to Reilly's father, a 30-year Air Force veteran, who passed away last year.

Paul Delaney can be reached at [email protected].