Post Falls names administrator

Eric Keck, a private development consultant from Utah, will be Post Falls’ new city administrator.

“For us it was, who fit the culture and where we wanted to keep going,” said Mayor Clay Larkin of why Keck was chosen. “He understands growth and he understands what’s going to take place and he understands what his role is going to be.”

Keck, who starts Sept. 18, spent a decade as the community and economic development director, and then city manager, in Draper. The suburb of Salt Lake City has about 35,000 residents.

Keck will replace Jim Hammond, the Republican candidate running for the seat being vacated by retiring state Sen. Dick Compton.

Keck’s salary will amount to about $110,000 annually.

From his office at the Wadsworth Development Group, the Utah company where he’s worked for a year, Keck said he was attracted to the Idaho position because of the challenge of helping to manage rapid growth. He said he had conversations with Post Falls residents concerned about too much growth, and that his public and private experience would help him work on those issues.

“My philosophy is, if a community isn’t growing, or reinventing itself, it’s dying,” Keck said. “You want to prevent loss of an identity, loss of that friendly small-town feel. I think what needs to occur is a visioning process, wherein the town identifies … where they want to go, and then build points of how they want to get there.”

Keck will not have much time to learn the ropes in Post Falls, Hammond said. City staff and officials are still developing the City Hall campus and it’s important for a new city administrator to be involved in figuring out how to invigorate the area around Spokane and Fourth streets, where officials hope to identify a core downtown area.

“There are several issues still on the plate for the city,” Hammond said. “We’re working on this new smart code to manage how we zone and how we grow, and the intent of that is to more intelligently manage property and manage growth so that we encourage infill, so that we encourage a lot of mixed neighborhoods that are more sustainable.

“Certainly he’ll need to take the lead on that.”