Good intentions gone awry.

That may be the best way to describe some of the work of the City of Fort Collins' Urban Renewal Authority at the moment.

As recently reported by our Molly Armbrister, the URA is considering requiring businesses that are located within urban renewal zones to make their buildings environmentally friendly in order to qualify for tax-increment financing.

Buildings would have to be LEED silver-certified by the U.S. Green Building Council.

Talk about giving with one hand and taking with the other. Adopting this approach would, at a minimum, mean adding thousands of dollars to even the most modest project.

Fortunately, this is just an idea at the moment and the City Council would have to sign off before it becomes policy.

On this issue, the council would do well to heed former Mayor Ray Martinez, a member of the executive board of the South Fort Collins Business Association.

His common-sense response to the notion: Requiring LEED certification sounds like good policy but it's just too expensive for most small businesses.

Such a change could discourage ever better-financed developers from proposing projects in the URAs.

The