COEUR d’ALENE — About 15,000 people attend events, festivals and youth sports programs that the City of Hayden puts on each year.

But these programs are about more than the numbers, Mayor Alan Davis emphasized Thursday during his State of the City address for the Hayden Chamber of Commerce at the Best Western Plus Coeur d'Alene Inn. 

“You’re helping build the kind of town that people stay in, choose to invest in and raise their families in, and that matters,” he said.

Hayden’s population now stands at around 17,500, with continued residential growth in 2025 driven primarily by single-family home development. 

“Hayden remains both an attractive place to invest (and) an economically strong community,” Davis said.

He also told the roughly 120 attendees, many of whom are local business owners themselves, that the growth of Hayden’s business community has paralleled the city’s population growth. 

The Hayden Chamber of Commerce has seen steady membership growth and entered 2026 with over 100 members.  

Davis plans to continue strengthening partnerships with the business community in 2026, building on the philosophy of “deliberate, steady growth” he has emphasized since taking office in 2024. 

“We want to concentrate business development to where it makes sense,” he said.  

Doing so will include strengthening the city’s main industrial district, improving key transportation corridors, supporting light-industrial areas and encouraging small business development.  

All of this will require “targeted investments” in city infrastructure, which Davis noted can be “shockingly expensive,” particularly when it comes to intersection improvement. 

The traffic circle planned for Ramsey Road at Honeysuckle Avenue, for example, has a price tag of around $4 million.  

Even so, such projects have become imperative for Hayden’s long-term economic viability. 

“Infrastructure is the foundation that supports economic development,” Davis said. “If customers can’t move easily through town, it’s the businesses that feel it first.”  

Davis also addressed concerns about the availability of affordable housing in Hayden during a question-and-answer session.

The average home price in Hayden was about $627,405 as of Jan. 31, according to data from Zillow, marking a 3.3% increase from last year. 

Davis said home size and pricing are primarily determined by developers rather than the city, while emphasizing that city leadership is working to incentivize the construction of smaller, more affordable homes. 

“It’s a huge priority for me that our kids and grandkids can afford to live in Hayden,” Davis said.

**This story was edited Feb. 27 to reflect that around 15,000 people attend events put on by the City of Hayden each year.