Idaho Legislature examines urban renewal 

If you don’t think urban renewal agencies need to be reigned in, Kathleen Sims has a map to show you. The businesswoman and former Idaho senator presented a map of Couer d’Alene’s urban renewal districts to members of the Idaho Legislature’s Joint Interim Land-Use Study Group last week. The group is studying tax implications and oversight issues regarding urban renewal districts.

“It follows everywhere the water is,” she said of the map.

It would be hard to characterize waterfront property in Coeur d’Alene as blighted. As one might expect, that’s where property values are rising the fastest, Sims said, so the tax increment the urban renewal agency, Lake City Development Corp., receives from that property is huge.

The Idaho Legislature in 1965 gave Idaho cities the authority to create urban renewal districts to reclaim deteriorated areas. But that’s not what’s being done in Coeur d’Alene, Sims said. “There’s no blight in Coeur d’Alene and I would welcome anyone to come and try to find some.”

Some urban renewal agencies may be abusing the law, said Len Crosby, chairman of the urban renewal agency in Post Falls. But a legislative solution could hurt the ability of agencies that are on the up-and-up to do away with blighted areas and attract new companies to the city, he said. “To the extent that you take one of the urban renewal agencies that isn’t following the rules to the woodshed, it affects us all.”

The Post Falls urban renewal agency has done its best to abide by the rules, Crosby said. It retired one of its districts seven years early because the urban renewal work was done and the agency no longer needed to collect tax dollars there. It has not tried to expand districts to include unblighted areas.

And it has brought more than 3,000 jobs to Post Falls, a city that competes aggressively with Spokane, Wash. Many new businesses such as Buck Knives, 84 Lumber and Health Care Resources would have gone to Spokane for its favorable tax structure if not for the land deals Post Falls’ urban renewal agency was able to give them.

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