Business Leaders Consider ‘Image Summit’ Idea Seen As A Catch-22 By Many Who Think Discussing Area’s Problems Makes Them Worse

Business leaders here have yet to decide whether to heed developer Duane Hagadone’s call for an “image summit” to fight bad press about North Idaho.

Hagadone told the Coeur d’Alene Association of Realtors a week ago that the biggest problem facing the region is media coverage that associates white supremacist movements and polluted lakes with Coeur d’Alene and North Idaho.

The Coeur d’Alene Area Chamber of Commerce will discuss the idea of a summit this week, said Pat McGaughey, general manager and executive director of the chamber.

“We’re damned if we do and damned if we don’t,” McGaughey said. “If we do, it really grabs more attention. I think you’re fueling the fire if you do it.”

At the same time, business leaders recognize that their bottom lines suffer from media coverage of militia activity, the presence of former Los Angeles police detective Mark Fuhrman, whose book was just released, and the intense legal battle over the danger of metals in Lake Coeur d’Alene.

While the region has seen unprecedented growth in housing and accompanying commercial buildings to support the new people here, the pace has slowed. Hagadone predicted last week a sharper slowdown in the real estate market.

Tourism drives economic growth in the Panhandle. Many of the new residents who moved their businesses here did so after visiting North Idaho as a tourist. A strong drop in the number of requests for relocation information from the chambers in the region, plus fewer numbers at visitor centers, suggests that the region may be losing some of its luster.

Hagadone warned that unless the community recognizes it has an image problem, the economic slowdown could accelerate.

In Sandpoint, community leaders there have a meeting scheduled Friday to discuss economic development, said Jonathan Coe, executive director the Sandpoint Chamber of Commerce. Hagadone’s request likely will be discussed, he said.

These kinds of summits have paid dividends in the past, said Nancy DiGiammarco, head of the Kootenai County Convention and Visitors Bureau. A tourism summit last year helped create a regional marketing approach for the Panhandle and also helped consolidate tourism marketing efforts in Kootenai County into one bureau, she said.

An international group of travel writers will be staying in Coeur d’Alene in April, and that’s an opportunity for local businesses to present a more positive side of the region, she said. The marketing committee for the bureau will meet next week to discuss the idea of a summit, she said.

The Idaho Department of Commerce, which also oversees tourism marketing efforts, commissioned a study of distant cities and how people there perceive North Idaho. Virtually none of the people surveyed around the country associated North Idaho with white supremacists or other negative stories.

, DataTimes