COEUR d'ALENE - The Coeur d'Alene City Council approved a zone change Tuesday that could lay the groundwork for a residency program facility for doctors.

Kootenai Health, partnering with Parkwood Business Properties, is planning to put a four-story facility off Lincoln Way near the hospital. The council agreed to switch the residential zoning on the roughly six acres of property to Commercial Light 17, which would allow for the facility to go up.

"Everyone wants doctors around," said Councilman Woody McEvers. "I'm going to support this just by the way you did it."

Parkwood had been acquiring land around the hospital and adjacent Interlake Medical Building for around 10 years with the goal of expanding the medical practice. If built, the 30,000- to 50,000-square-foot structure would host six residents in each year of the three-year program, for a total of 18 physicians at a time. It would work with the University of Washington in resources and development.

"This will go a long ways in filling that need," City Councilman Al Hassell said of recruiting new doctors and practices to the area.

A recent assessment by Southwind Associates of the region that identified a need for as many as 72 primary care physicians by 2015. Idaho ranks 49th in the nation for physicians per 1,000 people.

The facility and associated parking would be constructed as an expansion of the adjacent Interlake Medical Building, according to the applicants.

The city also approved for Mayor Sandi Bloem to begin appointing members to an ad hoc committee to determine what the city can do to save the trees along Rosenberry Drive. The Army Corps of Engineers ordered the city to remove the trees as a way to secure the levee earlier this year, which the city has said it will only comply with after all other options have been exhausted.