The City Park Promenade Has a Fix-It List. What Stands Between It and Construction?

The planters along the City Park waterfront are empty. They once held trees, and those trees died. According to the Coeur d'Alene Press, the planters "sit empty to this day," on a stretch of concrete between Independence Point and Park Drive that the city's own staff describe as one of the most heavily used pedestrian corridors in the region.

This fall, those planters made it onto a written list. The list is the easy part. The newly proposed committee, the season the city wants to build in, and a federal parkland problem elsewhere in town will decide whether the concrete under your feet changes soon. That problem has nothing to do with the waterfront itself, but it touches the funding.

The list, as the commission heard it

On Sept. 29, 2026, Coeur d'Alene resident Doug Eastwood presented the concept to the Parks and Recreation Commission at a workshop. According to the draft minutes, these improvements were discussed:

• Wider areas for pedestrians to move through
• New benches and site furnishings to replace the aging ones
• Better lighting
• More landscaping and a plan for replacing trees
• Upgraded bike parking
• Improved restrooms
• General beautification and modernization of the promenade

Tom Torgerson is helping lead the effort with Eastwood. He told the Coeur d'Alene Press that the problem built up slowly: "There's just been deferred maintenance and literally degradation of the walkway itself that has happened over the last 10 or 15 years."

By Oct. 19, the scope had grown. Parks and Recreation Director Adam Rouse wrote a staff report for that evening's meeting. It frames the committee's work as covering the whole City Park corridor, including a possible realignment of parts of the Centennial Trail and future connections at Independence Point. The same report raises safety and accessibility challenges on parts of the corridor, along with amenities that "no longer meet the needs of current users."

So a project that began with benches and planters now includes how the trail runs through the park.

A 1976 seawall under a corridor carrying up to a million people

How the park was built explains why the fixes reach as deep as they do. The Coeur d'Alene Press cites the Museum of North Idaho: the waterfront started out as Blackwell Park, with an early seawall of rough wood and timber from nearby lumber and industrial operations. The current stone and concrete seawall went in by 1976.

Nearly 50 years later, that shoreline carries a lot of traffic. The commission's staff report puts the corridor's estimated annual use at 800,000 to 1 million visitors and calls it a main recreation, tourism, and transportation link between downtown, The Coeur d'Alene Resort, Independence Point, and City Park. For scale, a 2019 Coeur d'Alene Press report on a University of Idaho study estimated 417,000 annual users for the entire 23-mile North Idaho Centennial Trail. The two figures come from different sources and measure different areas, so they can't be compared directly. What they do show is that the city's planning documents treat this short waterfront stretch as busier than most of the trail system around it.

That level of use shapes the calendar more than anything else in the plan.

Why the work is aimed at the weeks after Labor Day

The Sept. 29 minutes state the goal: go out to bid in mid-summer and start work after Labor Day, described as "a less busy time for the park." The minutes do not give a year.

That window is narrow. A project that misses a mid-summer bid date can't simply start in October without running into whatever comes next, and the minutes don't say what happens if a season slips. The schedule assumes a lot of work gets done first. According to the minutes, the committee would review existing conditions, develop several concepts with a landscape architect, choose preferred options, and return to the commission with recommendations and an estimate of probable costs. Retired landscape architect Dale Hatch was mentioned as someone who could help with the concept design.

The staff report adds a step after that. The committee's recommendations "will be advisory in nature." Any design contract, use of city money, change to the property, or construction would still need to go through the city's procurement rules, environmental review, public processes, and City Council approval.

Independence Point is set aside as a later phase

The waterfront at Independence Point is where downtown, the Resort, and City Park meet, and it is also the part most likely to slow everything down. Commissioners at the Sept. 29 workshop discussed earlier concepts for moving or redesigning the Independence Point parking areas. The goal would be better pedestrian safety and flow "from city hall all the way through City Park," along with a clearer visual connection between downtown, the Resort, and the park.

According to the minutes, several commissioners stressed that Independence Point might end up as a separate phase because of its larger scope and "potential public discussion associated with parking modifications." Splitting it off lets the City Park section move ahead without waiting on the parking debate. It also means the promenade could be repaired in pieces, with the downtown end coming last.

The federal rule that touches the funding list

The funding sources discussed on Sept. 29 were city money, private donations, community partnerships, service club contributions, sponsorships, and grants. Groups named as possible committee members include Rotary, Panhandle Kiwanis, The Coeur d'Alene Resort, city engineering staff, business representatives, and residents.

The grants are where an unrelated issue comes in. The staff report says the committee's work "will also consider any applicable Land and Water Conservation Fund requirements that may affect future project implementation."

The Land and Water Conservation Fund, or LWCF, is a federal program. The National Park Service explains that under Section 6(f)(3), land that received a grant can't be converted away from public outdoor recreation without federal approval. Any land that is converted has to be replaced with property of at least equal fair market value and reasonably equivalent usefulness and location. The Idaho Department of Parks and Recreation describes the program as protecting property for outdoor recreation "in perpetuity."

At a 10 a.m. workshop on Oct. 19, the same day the promenade committee was on the evening agenda, grant staff from the Idaho Department of Parks and Recreation walked commissioners through two unresolved conversions in Coeur d'Alene, according to the draft workshop minutes.

1. North Idaho College tennis courts. Some courts were replaced at Cherry Hill Park. The remaining protected courts were later removed during campus improvements, which counted as a conversion.
2. Memorial Field. Several residential lots were built inside the federally protected boundary after earlier land transactions.

The state's grant manager said the conversion of the former tennis court land was valued at about $2.12 million. The proposed replacement, known as the Hawks Nest or Trails property, was valued at about $672,000. By the state's calculations, the city is about $2 million short of what it needs to resolve both conversions. Once the city finds acceptable replacement land and completes federal "Yellow Book" appraisals, approval could take about a year after a complete application is submitted.

The minutes record that commissioners called a return to compliance important "to preserve eligibility for future grant opportunities and recreation funding." Grants are one of the funding sources named for the promenade. These conversion problems are located at NIC and Memorial Field, not on the City Park waterfront, and none of the records describes them as blocking the promenade project. What they do describe is a city that has a federal compliance gap to close while it starts looking for money for its most heavily used waterfront.

Where the process stood after Oct. 19

The Oct. 19 agenda for the 5:30 p.m. regular meeting listed "Establish Ad Hoc Committee for City Park Promenade" as an action item, and the staff recommendation was to approve it. As of late October, the commission's minutes page had no posted minutes for that evening session, so the committee's membership and next steps have not been published.

Commission agendas include a public comment period with a three-minute limit per speaker. That is the open channel for anyone who walks this stretch and has opinions on benches, bike racks, or where the trail should go.

Some park work has already been finished. According to the commission's Sept. 14 minutes, included in the same packet, Eastwood, a former Parks Director, praised the "recently completed renovation of the City Park Bandshell floor" during public comment.

Rouse called the promenade effort "a great opportunity to partner with the community to bring the City Park waterfront back to life," as he told the Coeur d'Alene Press. The next records to watch for are the posted minutes from the Oct. 19 evening meeting and, later, the committee's estimate of probable costs.

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