In honor of CCC’s 20^th anniversary, I feel it would be appropriate to speak at our Sept. 20^th meeting about the public relations aspects of a special subject in Boise and the Treasure Valley: the Simplot family’s JUMP project.

As spokesperson for the family, I have become intimately familiar with many aspects of JUMP, and I’d like to pass along some of the things I’ve learned about performing the public relations function for the project.

          Here is a brief synopsis of JUMP:

Jack’s Urban Meeting Place (JUMP) consists of a 50,000-square-foot, seven-story learning center and a park on 7.4 acres between 9^th and 11^th and Front and Myrtle in downtown Boise. Construction costs and ongoing programming will be financed by the Simplot family foundation, with groundbreaking hopefully taking place in the spring of 2012, and completion tentatively scheduled about two years later.

Those of you who followed the progress of the project as it worked its way through city approvals know that there were a few bumps in the road, and I’d like to talk a bit about all that. I also will pass along some things that either I already knew and had reinforced, or learned for the first time. Hopefully, this will be of interest to many local PR and communications practitioners.

I’m also going to chat a bit about how CCC got started back in September 1991.

I’ll look forward to seeing you at the meeting on Sept. 20 at the Owyhee Plaza. You can register to attend the September meeting and join CCC or renew your membership here on our website.

-David Cuoio