Envisioning the Future of Coeur d’Alene

Coeur d’Alene 2030 Visioning Project is an organization that is an all-encompassing storehouse for the community’s goals. It is charged with keeping, facilitating and amending the goals that Coeur d’Alene citizens have voiced through a series of public surveys collected.

The group was recently awarded a $5,000 grant by America’s Best Communities, to help fund future healthy living projects, which is one of numerous CDA 2030 goals. A potential Center for Healthy Living is part of a larger proposal. But for now, the group will use the money to fund micro grants of projects devised by the public related to healthy living goals. The awards will be announced at the CDA 2030 Annual Celebration to be held Thursday, July 16 from 5:30 to 8pm at Riverstone Park.

“Our intention is to provide seed money for smaller initiatives that will support the Center for Healthy Living while we work on securing larger funding sources that could support the development of programs or a facility,” said Nicole Kahler, the Project Manager for the CDA 2030 Visioning Project.

The micro grant event this month is just the tip of the iceberg for the Visioning Project, now two years in the making. And what a huge undertaking it is.

“It is a giant elephant,” she said, referring to the enormous scope of the goals. “Mainly we are looking for leaders … and if the funding’s there, that’s how we are prioritizing.”

The Visioning Process

The first phase was to update the city’s goals for the future by gleaning ideas from the community. Beginning in mid-2013, CDA 2030 held workshops for adults and youth and conducted surveys to collect data about what the public wanted to work on for the future of Coeur d’Alene.

It also collected data from 29 opinion leaders such as political candidates, the Coeur d’Alene Tribe, North Idaho College and St. Vincent’s de Paul. In all, there were about 3,000 documents of data compiled to create an implementation plan.

“We wanted to see where the enthusiasm and resources were,” said Kahler.

In all, the data showed that Coeur d’Alene residents want to preserve their surroundings, history and improve their future through first-rate education, job training, affordable housing and health services and a stable, growing economy. The current organization has based its work off the city’s visioning project that began and concluded in the early 2000s by CDA 2020, Kahler explained.

“More public art, a community center and a library were part of CDA 2020,” Kahler said, referring to the group organized by the city. Last year’s opening of McEuen Park was one of the goals from the 2020 plan. And Gizmo, a “makerspace,” that teaches technology and creative classes, is a 2030 one. CDA 2030 is not a city organization but works in partnership with it, she explained.

From that enormous first step, CDA 2030 has boiled the goals down to six categories: community and identity, education and learning, environment and recreation, growth and development, health and safety and jobs and economy. Within each of those categories are numerous actions (projects, programs or activities).

The Implementation Plan

From these categories, CDA 2030 is working on facilitating 178 actions. The office looks for community members, businesses or organizations to lead an action and helps locate funding to accomplish it. From the visioning process, CDA 2030 created a comprehensive implementation plan where each action and a strategy to accomplish it was identified along with a lead partner and supportive organizations.

“Our job is to support and facilitate those leaders,” she said. “We also try to take on special projects.”

Two of the actions under the health and safety category, include creating a network of support services for community mental health rehabilitation and improved medical health services.

Under the category of growth and development, CDA 2030 recently hosted the East Sherman Town Hall Meeting, a public workshop, with lead partner, Coeur d’Alene last month. Together, they gathered public opinions on the visioning and planning for the growth and development of East Sherman Avenue. Public workshops such as this one will be held periodically as actions are planned.

Refreshing the Vision

The third phase of CDA 2030 is to look forward 15 years from now and refresh the vision. The actions outlined will be revisited regularly by the organization to see what can be updated or changed. It is an ongoing process that will keep moving forward to help make Coeur d’Alene not only a more beautiful city but also one with improved medical and educational resources and a healthy economy.

“There are more than 45 lead partners to help make this a reality, plus the Chamber of Commerce and the city community,” Kahler said.

For more information about CDA 2030 or to get involved, see www.cda2030.org.

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