The Sandpoint business community, through that city's urban renewal agency, has brought in a highly touted consultant to breathe life into a revitalization plan developed nearly a decade ago.

The consultant, Mark Rivers, who owns Boise-based real estate development and marketing firm Brix & Co., will be charged with recruiting and retaining businesses and services, redeveloping downtown properties, and expanding on the city's traditional summer tourist season.

Those needs were identified in a revitalization plan the city contracted in 2002.

"We had quite a good revitalization plan," Sandpoint Mayor Gretchen Hellar says.

The city handled some of the infrastructure improvements called for in the plan, such as recommended street and sidewalk upgrades, but outside of the city government, there was no one to take reins on other recommendations, Hellar says.

"It sat on the shelf," she says. "The more we looked at it, the more it became obvious to me and other folks that we needed someone who would receive payment for implementing some of the revitalization effort."

In addition, Rivers will help the downtown business community adjust to changes in traffic and consumer patterns anticipated with the opening of the Sand Creek Byway.

Rivers, who plans to meet with members of the business community at an open house next week in Sandpoint, says he sees more opportunities than challenges for the city.

"I've seen both sides of Sandpoint," he says, meaning he's visited the city several times on business and on vacation. "Pound for pound, it's an unbelievably corporate town as well as a tourist community."

He says not many isolated mountain towns of 7,000 people can claim to be the corporate home to the likes of women's fashion retailer Coldwater Creek, salad dressing maker Litehouse Foods Inc., and light airplane manufacturer Quest Aircraft Co., all innovators in their respective industries.

Sandpoint can hold up those companies as examples to help recruit new businesses there, he says.

Stephen Drinkard, the city of Sandpoint's project director, says the business community needs someone like Rivers with more expertise and outside perspective than was available locally to kick-start the city's revitalization plan.

"We were looking for people who did things, who had the creativity and energy that actually changeddowntowns," he says.

Drinkard says Rivers is experienced in identifying funding sources and raising large amounts of money for investment in economic revitalization.

"We need help from someone used to working in millions of dollars," he says.

For instance, Rivers' Boise-based Brix & Co. real estate development and marketing firm helped conceive the BoDo District. Named for Boise downtown, the BoDo District is a $60 million, four-square-block redevelopment that transformed a declining warehouse district into an urban community.

"We brought in tenants that weren't there before, like Urban Outfitters and P.F. Chang's China Bistro," Rivers says.

The BoDo District now also includes entertainment venues, offices, hotels, and residences, he says.

Rivers will be paid $9,000 a month plus travel expenses through the Sandpoint Urban Renewal Agency under a one-year contract, and he will be required to spend at least four days a month in Sandpoint, Drinkard says.

The city has some noteworthy vacancies to fill, Hellar says, including a 2-acre former auto sales lot on Cedar Street that Taylor-Parker Motor Co., now Taylor & Sons Chevrolet, vacated when it moved to larger quarters in Ponderay, just north of Sandpoint, at the start of the year.

Across Cedar Street, a 28,000-square-foot building that housed Belwood's Furniture has stood vacant for nearly two years, she says.

Barely three blocks to the southeast, Inkwell Inc., Sandpoint's homegrown stationery and office supply store, closed its doors nearly a year ago, and its space remains vacant.

While downtown can claim the historic Panida Theater as its cultural anchor, and its post office as its government anchor, it hasn't been an easy go for local businesses, Hellar says.

"We appear to be lacking anchor tenants downtown," she says.

Hellar says Rivers will view vacant buildings and assess what kinds of business and services would best utilize the space to create jobs or bring people downtown.

Adds Drinkard, "We want to create not just retail, but really important medical, educational, and recreational services.Then we won't have to worry about whether ice cream shops and restaurants have enough customers, because people will be coming downtown."

Bonner General Hospital, located on the north edge of downtown, likely will need to expand, and Rivers will look into the feasibility of it taking over the vacant car lot, Drinkard says.

The city also is hoping to create a learning center downtown that would be attractive for a satellite location for Coeur d'Alene-based North Idaho College, he says.

Rivers says he agrees that the city should encourage a broad higher-education presence.

"Sandpoint is the most quintessential college town that doesn't have a college," he says. "It has a burgeoning arts community and it feels like it should have a stronger role in higher education."

The next challenge the city will face is the anticipated decline in traffic due to the Sand Creek Byway, which is scheduled to open late this year, says Kate Buska, manager of the Downtown Sandpoint Business Association. The byway essentially is a bypass that will route traffic on U.S. 95 past Sandpoint rather than through the city center.

"The byway is going to change the way traffic patterns flow," Buska says. "We no longer will have cattle trucks and logging trucks coming down our streets," she says.

The new route also will change how travelers see the town. "People will be seeing Sand Creek and the back of Sandpoint rather than downtown."

The Idaho Department of Transportation's original environmental impact study for the byway estimated that Sandpoint likely would lose 250 jobs downtown due to the decrease in through traffic, Drinkard says.

A number of Sandpoint residents already have moved their shopping patterns to Ponderay, he says.

"I imagine some local traffic likely will bypass Sandpoint to get to Wal-Mart, Home Depot, Big R, and other big stores out there," Drinkard says. "We haven't done much planning for byways."

The decrease in traffic congestion downtown likely will ease travel within the city, Rivers says.

"I hope it helps us create a more pedestrian scale," he says. "Right now, it's like having a freeway run through the shopping district."

Rivers says that tourism also is one of the city's strengths that he can help ratchet to a higher level.

"Tourism is important, we'll focus on ways to try to add a month or two on either end of the vacation period," he says. "To go from three or four months to six months, as well as having a winter season, is doable."