The city of Coquitlam is hoping a new logo and slogan will help draw tourists to the municipality.
“Fun is in our nature” is the tagline that recently received council approval and it will begin to appear on billboards and advertisement as the city ramps up its tourism strategy.
The city’s tourism manager, Eric Kalnins, said the slogan captures Coquitlam’s geographic proximity to the natural environment.
“It needs to be true to place,” he told council during a committee meeting last month. “You can’t fool people by saying one thing and really presenting another… We are really capturing what Coquitlam is all about.”
According to a staff report, the tourism brand identity was the result of research and analysis along with a survey of residents. Input was also sought from students in Douglas College’s marketing program.
Kalnins said three consistent themes emerged during the consultation process: nature, family/welcoming and a central location.
“It has a different meaning to many different people,” said Kalnins of the tourism slogan. “It is memorable, it is short, it is concise.”
But while council was in agreement on the slogan, there was less consensus around the look of a new Tourism Coquitlam logo.
Several council members questioned the need for a separate brand, preferring to stick with the logo currently used on city advertisements and letterhead. Others said that a looping Q in the new logo is difficult to read.
Deputy city manager John DuMont said many municipalities separate their tourism marketing from the general promotion of city hall and city activities.
“This is meant to be part of a larger piece,” he said, adding that tourism branding needs to “stand on its own.”
David Munro, the city’s economic development manager, said staff would take council’s feedback and look at its options for reconfiguring or reworking the Tourism Coquitlam logo and present changes at an upcoming council-in-committee meeting.
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The city of Coquitlam is taking another shot at updating its land use policies in the Oakdale neighbourhood.
Andrew Merrill, manager of community planning, said a public consultation process will begin in the spring after residents petitioned the city asking for higher density land uses.
The request from homeowners is a marked departure from a year and a half ago, when people in the area resisted changes proposed as part of the Burquitlam-Lougheed Neighbourhood Plan (BLNP). After several contentious consultations, Oakdale was eventually designated a future planning area and left unchanged.
But because residents are driving the proposal this time, Merrill said the process has a better chance at success.
“We have had a couple of different petitions signed by multiple groups,” he told The Tri-City News. “The fact that this is citizen-led is a bit different.”
Merrill noted that during the BLNP planning process, Oakdale was one of 10 sub-areas. A new consultation would be more focused, he added, allowing for additional opportunities for residents to express their issues.
Merrill said the land use designation update would allow different types of housing in the predominantly detached-home neighbourhood. The alternative residential types, he added, would give families more options than the “choice between a too-small apartment and a too-expensive house.”
“We are faced with an… ongoing housing crisis that we are working to solve,” he said. “We are looking at ways to change land use to allow new families to establish themselves.”
• For more information on the Oakdale Land Use Designation Update, go to www.coquitlam.ca/oakdale. The city said residents are encouraged to sign up to receive project updates via email.
