Butting heads on 'branding'

COEUR d'ALENE - Ignite cda, this city's urban renewal agency, has responded to Sen. Mary Souza's questions about the agency's recent rebranding.

Souza, R-Coeur d'Alene, sits on the Idaho Legislature's interim Committee on Urban Renewal and she has some concerns about how the Coeur d'Alene Urban Renewal Agency, formerly doing business as the Lake City Development Corporation, has engaged in an effort to rebrand itself as "ignite cda."

Last month, Souza sent ignite cda executive director Tony Berns a letter on senate letterhead asking Berns a series of questions about the agency's rebranding efforts.

Souza wanted to know why the new name does not mention urban renewal in its title to let people know that it is a publicly-funded public agency, and where in Idaho law the agency is authorized to spend upward of $80,000 to advertise the name change.

She also asked Berns to explain how his agency "partnered to create over 1,400" jobs in Kootenai County, what those jobs entail and whether employers are still producing that number of jobs.

In response to Souza's first questions about the agency name, Berns said his legal advisors could find no requirement under Idaho law that requires "urban renewal agency" to be listed in the name of the agency.

In fact, Berns sent Souza a detailed response letter to her questions.

That letter explained that LCDC hired a research company to assess it community identity last year, and the company essentially found that Kootenai County residents have a negative perception of "urban renewal agencies," but supported the various projects that LCDC has been engaged in since it was formed in 1997.

The residents who were polled also thought LCDC was a private development company rather than a taxpayer-funded public agency.

"Our legal name is Coeur d'Alene Urban Renewal Agency," Berns said Monday. "We were doing business as LCDC and now we are doing business as ignite cda."

In his response letter, Berns said his agency is not the only urban renewal agency in Idaho that does business under a different name.

He points to other urban renewal agencies in Idaho such as Capital City Development Corporation in Boise, Idaho Falls Redevelopment Agency and Rexburg Redevelopment Agency.

"We are not developers, we are not a private company," Berns said. "We are a public agency."

Souza said the average citizen wouldn't know that just from the name of the agency. She said while the ignite cda website does mention the fact that it is an urban renewal agency, readers have to work to find that information.

"If the public perception of the agency is negative," Souza said, "they should improve transparency instead of adding another layer of confusion and obfuscation by adding a name that says nothing about what they do."

That is why Bern said ignite cda has decided to engage the public in a "communication outreach effort" to drive residents to its website, which explains in great detail what the agency does and how it conducts business.

That effort has cost the agency a total of $83,209 so far, and Souza said ignite cda has budgeted another $40,000 in its 2016 budget for what she calls a "public relations campaign."

Berns said no matter what you call the effort, ignite cda is trying to inform the public of the benefits and the 1,400 jobs his agency has helped bring to the county.

In response to Souza's questions about those jobs that - in her eyes - ignite cda appears to take credit for, Berns reminded Souza: "As you know, urban renewal agencies do not create jobs, they help attract employers who create the jobs.

"Ignite cda helped set the table for these employers by helping to redevelop the brownfield sites that now host the Riverstone mixed-use development, the U.S. Bank Service Center and the Kroc Community Center," he wrote.

While he disagrees that those all needed the amount of help ignite cda provided, Berns believes none of them would have been built without the help of the urban renewal district.

Berns also mentioned in his response that the jobs created by those employers has now grown to more than 1,700 jobs.

Souza is gathering the information as part of a special interim committee that was convened to study urban renewal in Idaho and to make possible recommendations to the full Legislature when it reconvenes in January 2016.

Berns said the committee is planning to meet two or three more times before the legislative session, and he intends to cooperate in that process with whatever the committee needs.