Public input sought during Feb. 10 meeting on downtown revitalization

A Downtown Implementation Planning Public Workshop will be held Tuesday, Feb. 10, from 5:30-7 p.m. at the The Bengoechea Hotel, l195 N. 2nd West St. (west of the railroad tracks,next to the Basque Park).

Mountain Home residents, business operators, property owners, and friends of downtown are being invited to attend and help plan steps for action to beautify and improve the economy of downtown Mountain Home.

The workshop will include a summary of Mountain Home's 2000 Downtown Revitalization Plan and then invite participants to dream of new projects, big or small, that can be done to improve downtown.

The effort to plan and encourage action steps for downtown revitalization is being led by a partnership of Sage Community Resources, the regional economic development agency for southwest Idaho, and the City of Mountain Home. It is funded in part by a grant from the Economic Development Administration.

Ron Swearingen, the city's executive director of economic development, said the event is open to all members of the public.

"We don't care if you're in high school or if you're 80," Swearingen said. "What would you like to see downtown? What would you like to see gone?"

Information collected from the workshop will aid the city in preparing its master plan to revitalize Mountain Home's downtown.

The city received a $30,000 technical assistance planning grant from the Economic Development Administration last fall.

The grant was a match grant, meaning Mountain Home has to match the $30,000 grant. The Urban Renewal Agency and the city each put up $7,500 to match half of the amount and the other half is required to be donated in kind, such as the work of city employees such as Swearingen, the city planner and city engineer.

The workshop is one of the ways the city will reach its in-kind donation requirement.

However, Swearingen said, the goal of the workshop is to seek public input for the plan.

"It's going to be the community's plan, not ours," Swearingen said.

City planner Bonnie Harper said the key component of the plan, and what separates it from previous plans the city has created, is the implementation component.

She said that element will focus on how the plan is to be executed and who will do what to carry the plan out.

The Business Improvement District Committee is a group of 12-20 business owners and other interested parties that meet monthly to discuss the downtown revitalization project.

Swearingen said he would like to see the group become a taxing district in the fall, around the same time the master plan is expected to be completed.

To form the district, a petition representing property owners that own half of the assessed value of the district plus $1 would have to be signed.

The district would make up approximately 16 blocks from approximately Commercial Tire to Albertsons' and from the Bengoechea Hotel to Hacker Middle School.

Swearingen said the master plan would focus on what the community wants downtown to look like while the district would focus on what the downtown businesses would look like.

Harper explained that the district would be able to use its fees to make improvements to the area that would supplement the city's master plan, to help carry out that plan or in other ways it deems necessary to improve the district that the city may not be able to finance.

Swearingen and Harper agreed the city's downtown area should be the core of the community.

"When you have a successful downtown, you have successful businesses and a place where people want to be," Harper said.

Swearingen said revitalizing the downtown area has been a top priority since Mayor Tom Rist swore into office.