Northeast News
July 25, 2013

Northeast Alliance Together (NEAT) has launched a logo contest and it’s time for area residents to voice their opinions on the top five designs.

NEAT formed two years ago and is a strategic alliance of neighborhood associations, businesses, non-profit organizations, public agencies and other stakeholders in Historic Northeast that are collaborating on community-based redevelopment activities and seeking funding to pursue those efforts.

To date, their efforts have resulted in an award of $150,000 Creating Sustainable Places grant from Mid-America Regional Council and the appropriation of $250,000 in funding from the city of Kansas City, Mo., for economic development initiatives. NEAT representatives have been busy developing the program and its activities, and will be ready to announce them later this year.

To help share the positive news about these new programs, NEAT representatives issued a call for artists and launched a logo design contest to seek designs for a logo that could be used on signage and in promotional materials to tie these economic development activities together.

“In order for new programs to be successful, we need to get the word out to the community that the resources are available to them,” City Council member Scott Wagner said. “We need to have a strategy for making residents and businesses aware of the programs and ensure that residents and businesses see them as credible and reliable. To do this we need a brand that is trusted.”

NEAT members have narrowed down the 26 design submissions to the top five, and it is up to the community to decide which one is the winner.

Community members can vote for their favorite design online through DesignCrowd at: www.designcrowd.com/vote/historic-northeast-kc-logo-contest-community-voting-poll.  Emails with a link to this site will be distributed via area neighborhoods and business organizations this week. Paper ballots will also be available at the North-East Public Library, 6000 Wilson Rd.; Mattie Rhodes Center, 148 N. Topping; and at the Northeast News, 5715 St. John Ave. The deadline for submitting votes will be 1 p.m. on Thursday, Aug. 1. 

Community representatives also have the ability to reject all the proposed designs and recommend that NEAT restart the design process and seek new designs by sending an email with “REJECT LOGO DESIGNS” in the subject line and including the text “I vote to reject all the proposed designs” to: neatkc@gmail.com.

“It is critically important that this design be something that is embraced and supported by the community at large, because it would represent the collective organizations and entities of the Historic Northeast and would be used to brand and promote the area, so we need input from residents to determine whether or not any of these designs resonate with them,” said Leslie Caplan, president of the Northeast Alliance Together.

A subcommittee of the NEAT organization will select a winner by Aug. 2. The winning designer will receive a stipend of $200.

 For questions about voting or for more information, please contact the NEAT Marketing Committee at neatkc@gmail.com.