CdA will try for foundation funds

Coeur d’Alene is trying to get money from the McDonald’s fortune to help build a community center.

The North Idaho Mayors Coalition recently supported a move for North Idaho towns to try to get money from the Ray and Joan Kroc Corps Community Center Foundation. Joan Kroc, the wife of the McDonald’s Corp. founder, gave about $2 billion to the Salvation Army to distribute across the country to build community centers. Joan Kroc died last October at age 75.

“The entire North Idaho region would benefit from the services that a community center, such as the ones envisioned by Joan Kroc, would bring to our community,” wrote Coeur d’Alene Mayor Sandi Bloem in a press release. Bloem is chairwoman of the North Idaho Mayors Coalition.

A committee of the mayors’ organization sent a feasibility application to the Kroc Initiative Task Force in Boise, which will make the initial selection of a few Idaho cities. Selected cities will make a more comprehensive presentation in March 2005 to the Salvation Army.

Coeur d’Alene currently is working on a land swap deal with the Coeur d’Alene School District that would result in a new middle school for the district and a community center for the city.

The idea is to turn Lakes Middle School into a community center in exchange for a new middle school building at Persons Field.

Coeur d’Alene has been striving for a community center for years. In 1999, voters shot down a proposal to build a $6.3 million community center.

A local car dealer also is floating the idea of building a $32 million recreational and cultural civic center on the Rathdrum Prairie. John Robideaux wants to use the half-cent sales tax Kootenai County currently charges to fund the jail expansion and property tax relief to build the civic center. For that to happen, the Idaho Legislature would have to expand the local option law to pay for projects other than jails. Then county residents would have to vote to use the sales tax money to go toward the civic center.