When urban redevelopment stopped up the community action communications earlier this month, the Lamar City Administrator started blaming County Commissioners and the people of the community with comments claiming they weren’t smart enough to understand. Oh, they’re smart enough alright. They understand the urban redevelopment project was meant to create a top heavy local government where the people of the community would be bound by DEBT to meet the requirements set up by the Lamar City Administrator and his co-horts on the Lamar City Council.

Urban Redevelopment doesn’t have to be that way.

Urban Redevelopment can be a COMMUNITY based incentive with motivated business owners coming up with inspired concepts that would bring success and greater recognition to their community without the high cost of debt and a high salaried City Adminstrator telling them what to do. Urban Redevelopment works when the people of the community who own businesses plan their strategies and work their plan together.

Economic Benefit to all businesses isn’t ever part of a package, there will naturally be some businesses who won’t participate and don’t care enough to get involved in a community transformation effort. Those businesses may or may not survive, and that is their right. Failed business may simply be a natural way to open up a greater opportunity within a community. The simple reality is that businesses survive, succeed and fail on a daily basis and the process is predictable.

Businesses without Plans fail because they don’t have a strong enough infrastructure to succeed.

Urban Redevelopment Plans created by City Administrators with a history of incomplete planning and management results probably won’t be well enough thought out to succeed either. The problem isn’t with the Urban Redevelopment Plan, so much as it is with the means and methods of controls incorporated into the plan by persons who don’t have the knowledge or ability to carry out the basic plan successfully.

Top heavy city government NEVER works.

What kind of Urban Redevelopment will Brand Your City Successful?

• Cooperative Independent Business Owners with a common community vision.
• City Leaders who promote and inspire community participation in City EVENTS.
• City Leaders who recognize the value of listening to the citizens of the community.
• City Leaders who are ACCOUNTABLE to the community they SERVE.
• Business Owners who have access to funding (grants and other resources) with community support (aka bankers willing to lend).
• City Events planned to support LOCAL BUSINESS.

Some great ways to brand your city without the “high cost of duplication” includes reusing some of the old standard signs and pass throughs to grab attention and capture interest in the town.

“Gating the city would be a nice thought, but more likely we could gain more attention by finding nice ways to attract people into the city rather than gating them out.”

~ Kenton Verhoeff

Visit Kenton Verhoeff at http://kentonverhoeff.com.

To learn more about Urban Redevelopment go to http://lamarco.us/blog and sign in for a FREE copy of the Lamar News.

The Branding Iron takes advantage of glitter and glitz any chance we get. When Commissioner of Agriculture chatters up the air waves across local radio stations, we grab the opportunity to catch up on the latest branding techniques. Inserting chips in cattle seems to be the thread that stitches up brand recognition, but how effective can that be? Those with readers can identify their cattle, and a satelite can find your heffer, but seriously, do you carry around a “reader”?

The Branding Iron offers greater recognition values for the general population, mostly easily readable and recognizable markings that give everyone a specific view of identifying our products and markets.

In Lamar, Colorado, the hometown of John Stulp, the Commissioner of Agriculture, recognition means we can see it, smell it, hear it, touch it, or taste it. Most of us don’t carry “readers” but we recognize cattle. Advertizing on the front range is much the same. We want to FEEL it.

Add the sparkle of the five senses to your Brand Expertise and increase the success rates of your Marketing Strategies. By making the five senses work for you, your marketing efforts will be rewarded.

Chalk one up for The Branding Iron and add Sizzle to your Marketing Strategy. Market your business with Social Networking on Twitter.