COEUR d'ALENE - The Coeur d'Alene City Council and the Lake City Development Corp. Board of Directors met in a workshop Thursday to discuss urban renewal priorities in Coeur d'Alene.

They also discussed holding a meeting with east Sherman stakeholders to gage the interest in revitalization in that area of the city.

LCDC Chairman Denny Davis opened the meeting with a short presentation on the urban renewal agency's annual report, and talked briefly about the agency's strategic and tactical goals.

After some discussion of those goals and LCDC's current priorities, some city council members had questions.

"How do you guys measure your success?" asked Councilman Dan Gookin.

Davis said the agency is actually looking for new tools to do just that, which may even require hiring an economist, but he conceded measuring success gets complicated on certain projects.

"How do you measure success in McEuen Park, or the Kroc Center or the new library?" Davis said. "We've added value - it's there."

"It's easy to say that it's there," Gookin said.

"Well tell me that it isn't, Dan," Davis responded. "Are those elements in the city that are not valuable to the community?"

Gookin asked if they are returning revenue.

Davis explained how LCDC looks at success on those projects by using the midtown improvements that were made on Fourth Street. He said after all the improvements were completed, Theresa Capone, who owns Capone's, told the agency that her business increased by 20 percent.

"Do we have a strict mathematical formula? No. It's impossible," he said.

Gookin said he would just like to see a better way to track the progress LCDC is making before moving forward to establish another district.

"We are going to be moving forward and talking about east Sherman and talking about east Sherman as a new district, then I think what would make me more comfortable is to have something predicating that," Gookin said. "We need to say here is what we are planning on doing. We plan on accomplishing X, Y and Z."

Coordinating with stakeholders should be the first step, Gookin added.

Davis said the LCDC does not have plans to create a new district on east Sherman, but the community is talking about it, so he put that issue on the workshop agenda to begin the discussion.

"If we could find an economic engine to land on east Sherman that would create enough increment to do something, what would we want to do, what would the community want to do, what would the east Sherman stakeholders want to do?" said LCDC Executive Director Tony Berns. "That is the beginning of the conversation."

Councilman Woody McEvers said the east Sherman issue goes back to the days when he sat on the city's planning and zoning commission.

He said the city looked at doing something on that end of Sherman, but the citizens and other stakeholders living in the area didn't want anything done.

"What I kind of walked away with was those folks on east Sherman are fine," McEvers said. "They don't want anything, they just want to be left alone."

Now, he said, things have changed down there and it may be time to take another look at it.

Councilman Ron Edinger, who lives in the east Sherman neighborhood, suggested holding a meeting with the stakeholders to get started.

"I think we need to have a meeting with LCDC and the city with the people down there to see what they have to say," Edinger said.

Davis said the city could hold a meeting, but it's important to let the attendees know that there is no official proposal to do anything down there because there is no development interest to drive the revitalization.

"But I do think there is some value in gathering people's views and understandings about it," He added.

Former Councilwoman Deanna Goodlander, who sits on the LCDC board, said she thinks the meeting is a good idea.

"I wonder if this is something the city should address first," she said. "I think planning and zoning needs to be pretty involved with the council to really look at a vision, so to speak, for east Sherman."

She said that more direction needs to come from the city before LCDC gets involved in the process of creating any new district. There needs to be a clear understanding of what the goals are.

In general, most agreed the discussion needs to continue.

Davis said the LCDC board will hold its annual planning meeting in April, and the board will take the city's issues into consideration as they draft new goals for the upcoming year.