BID gains traction in business community

SANDPOINT — Nine months after joining forces, the Sandpoint Business Improvement District and the Greater Sandpoint Chamber of Commerce have found their groove. During those months, BID manager Kim Queen spent most of her time getting to know the more than 400 different businesses that fall within the business improvement district.

“We had to build a foundation when we started out,” she said. “Kind of like starting a business.”

The combined organizations now are focused on rebuilding websites to add muscle to the business community’s overall Internet presence and create a positive first impression for web searchers.

“There’s no way around it,” Queen said. “The web has to be front and center as a marketing tool.”

According to Kate McAlister, the chamber’s president & CEO, local marketing can have more impact when the two organizations act as a screening tool for ad buys. By working hand-in-hand with the BID, the chamber also holds out the potential for advertising campaigns to be more affordable.

“We talk to our members about working together and sharing the dollars, because we all know that marketing is the biggest line item in our budgets,” said Queen.

Those advertising dollars often cluster around the schedule of events the groups manage throughout the year, including summer events such as the Wooden Boat Show on July 11-12, and Crazy Days on July 26.

The new face of the BID can be seen in the way it has been broken into defined business sectors. A total of nine categories cover lodging, arts and entertainment, restaurants, education, banking and professional, real estate and health care, while an at-large sector covers virtually everything else.

“Each and every one of those sectors has a representative and they’re all business owners from the BID,” said Queen.

“We’re trying to make sure that all sectors benefit from what we do,” McAlister said. “That was one of the BID’s previous problems — people thought all the focus was on First & Cedar.”

The big push at this stage of moving the BID forward has to do with encouraging individual members to utilize the voice of their particular sector representative, the manager explained. Members’ ideas and concerns are then brought to the table for action.

“If you really feel strongly about an issue, start with your representative and it will go from there,” she said.

Queen called her office “the goodwill arm of the BID.” It’s an important distinction, since the organization is funded through a business tax administered by the city — an historical sore spot with some business owners in the district.

“I understand that no one likes taxes,” Queen said. “What we’re doing is trying to help business owners determine the value in the BID.”

Some of that value comes with the continuation of beautification programs such as the popular flower baskets hung from lampposts in the downtown area. The groups now maintain nearly 75 baskets and plan to expand that number when city street improvements are complete and extra posts become available for brackets.

Less visible is the BID’s role as an information conduit between the business community and the city.

The group might not have all the answers, Queen said, but knows where to find them when issues arise.

A perennial question, it seems, is what McAlister described as downtown Sandpoint’s “parking issue” — using air quotes as she spoke the words.

The chamber has implemented all of the recommendations from a parking study conducted about 10 years ago, in which one of the findings was that the downtown area boasts more than 2,600 parking spaces, including a free, public parking lot that is centrally located within the district.

The parking issue, according to McAlister, appears to be more psychological than anything else.

And, if there is an issue, it might be rooted in the way business owners and employees tend to scoop up the spaces in front of their own establishments, causing customers to go looking for parking down the way or just give up altogether and shop elsewhere.

“It’s interesting that we’re still talking about parking in downtown Sandpoint,” the chamber president said. “Some things just never go away.”

For more information on BID membership and the programs available through that organization and the chamber, contact Kim Queen at (208) 263-2161, ext. 205.