Recreation as a Revitalization Strategy

Small industrial towns across America struggle with attracting business and retaining their population.   The typical approach to economic development is one of recruitment. Economic development recruitment is where cities focus their attention on recruiting major employers in the areas of manufacturing or “big box” and large scale retail. Another component to this recruitment strategy is focusing on industry clusters, like high tech and medical who can benefit from being in close proximity to each other.  The recruitment strategy of economic development can place small towns at a disadvantage, because local governments often offer land, tax relief, and other incentives to attract potential employers.  Small towns are of often not in a position to offer these incentives or resources to be competitive with larger cities.  While these recruitment strategies can bring jobs into a community, recruiting often moves jobs from one location to another displacing workers in the originating area, and not truly creating new jobs.

Over time, all communities experience changes that affect industry, revenue, population, and land use.  Economically resilient communities have the ability to pivot and adapt to these changing climates and reinvent their economic foundation.  Changes in economic climate are felt harder in small town communities because of their lack of perceived resources to compete and pivot. Small town communities do have the ability to pivot, even after losing their original or main economic industry, by emphasizing existing assets and distinctively unique resources.

Small town assets include ethnic heritage, mix use and historic structures, dilapidated infrastructure, and existing parks and recreation. If you look beyond the immediate city borders and focus your attention regionally certain assets become more prevalent.

Communities with in a geographic region have rich immigration and ethnic heritage settlements. Leveraging this heritage through festivals and events attracts tourism and food diversity.

Small town central business districts historically have architectural designs for mixed use. These structures offer opportunities for commercial use at street level and office/residential use on the upper levels. Mix use properties accentuate a walking vibrant business district.

Existing small town infrastructure was built for the expanding population not the current contracting population.  The dilapidated infrastructure that once supported a larger small town population is poised to evolve to support an accessible biking and walking community.  Supporting a walking and biking community retains and attracts youth, contributes to economic development, increases property values, and promotes a healthy living.  Additionally, evolving existing infrastructure to accommodate biking and walking is one step towards promoting a recreational economy.

Small towns adopting a recreational economy see a direct and indirect return on investment. The City Pittsburgh invested approximately $130 million in the 13 mile Three Rivers Park this investment has yielded nearly $4.1 billion on and near the riverfront. Parks and recreation departments need to pivot their community contribution position from service and maintenance to economic contributors.  Parks and recreation departments can play host to curbside and food truck cook off competitions, leveraging the ethnic heritage of the community as a themed event.  Creating pathways to places through walking and biking trails connects communities and promotes an active lifestyle.  A recreational framework infrastructure will attract tourism, increase property values, and serve as a catalyst for supporting outdoor recreational economic development.  Parks and recreation can also save municipalities money by the inclusion of green infrastructure in their design.  The City of Philadelphia is saving $14 billion by managing storm water and preventing flooding with parks and green infrastructure instead of investing in new pipes and tunnels.

While the City of Pittsburgh and Philadelphia present staggering numbers from non-comparable larger cities.  We remind our readers that everything is scalable.  Its critical for parks and recreation to focus on servicing all ages and individuals with vary degrees of ability while maintaining our existing programming. We believe that if parks and recreation took an opportunistic approach to existing assets, they would have a meaningful impact on the economic vitality of community they serve.

 

 

A 1950s Park Revolution: creative funding for our parks and public spaces

There has been a lot of time spent over the past week covering the maintenance of Steubenville’s Parks and Public Spaces. One statement from this was “People think it (the parks) can be run like it was back in the 50s and 60s. That cannot happen. We do not have the money or the man power, so we do the best we can.” We do NOT want things run like it was in the 50s and 60s.  In an ideal world we’d love to revive Stanton Park, though again, this is not possible.  What we also don’t want is city leadership to continue with the provincial 50s and 60s approach to our parks and public spaces.  Everything coming from city officials positions our parks and public spaces as a burden.  It’s time to pivot this approach and mind the gap.  The residents of Steubenville expect more and our city leaders should expect more.  What we want is the city to share the vision and value of our parks and publics spaces as infrastructure and economic contributors.  Anything less robs the residents of its full potential.

Across the country, urban parks are enjoying a renaissance. Dozens of new parks are being built or restored and cities are being creative about how and where they are located. Space under highways, on old rail infrastructure, reclaimed industrial waterfronts or even landfills are all in play as development pressure on urban land grows along with outdoor recreation needs.

However, in many communities, like Steubenville, public funding for building and maintaining city parks is inadequate, leaving municipalities to look for innovative ways to ‘close the gap’ between current budgets and tomorrow’s potential.

No longer just ball fields and picnic tables, today’s parks are being designed to serve multiple purposes, which has spurred interesting collaborations between parks departments and other public agencies—a creative type of public-public funding model. In some locations, park agencies, water utilities and transportation departments that would typically compete for public dollars, are instead pooling their resources to leverage funding for greater impact. This partnership model is often effective in green infrastructure projects where millions in taxpayer dollars can be saved while addressing aging water systems. In Atlanta, for instance, The Historic Fourth Ward Park and Reservoir helped the Department of Watershed Management save $16 million by opting for a stormwater-retention pond over grey infrastructure to mitigate flooding. In other communities, parks and schools or libraries are aligning goals and resources to solve challenges.

 

A wave of new downtown signature parks, from The High Line in New York City to Klyde Warren Park in Dallas, has been supported with civic investment from individuals and private foundations through public-private partnerships.

Park managers are also looking to concessions, marketing sponsorships, and other entrepreneurial activities to fund programs as well as maintenance. Post Office Square in Boston was built over an existing parking garage and nets most of its operating revenue from the parking fees below.

Other cities are figuring out how to capture the economic value that parks create. Business improvement districts or BIDs, have traditionally relied on voluntary taxes from local commercial development to fund improvements in the nearby public realm. Some are now taking on the responsibility of managing parks as well. The best known is Bryant Park in New York, but Yards Park in southwest Washington, DC, four downtown parks in Philadelphia and Campus Martius in the center of Detroit, are all run by BIDs.

But rather than simply cutting already-tight budgets, many cities and park advocacy groups are getting creative, rallying around new revenue generators, or mobilizing private monies in innovative ways. Take Philadelphia, which just last June passed a soda tax that will raise some $300 million for Philly’s parks, libraries and rec centers.

In Seattle, a major funding win came through a different sort of political victory, when citizens voted to create an independent Seattle Park District with the power to tax residents. The idea of a metropolitan park district in itself isn’t a new one — neighboring cities like Tacoma had employed similar models for nearly a century — but for Seattle, the newly granted authority to levy taxes (currently $0.33 per $1,000 of residents’ assessed property value) has been key in helping pay for park maintenance and operation.

In fast-growing Houston, the almost decade-old Houston Open Space Ordinance smartly tapped into the city’s construction boom by dictating that any developer building within city limits must either create parkland or pay a fee to the city’s park fund. Since that ordinance passed, the Houston Parks and Recreation Department reports, more than $34 million park dollars have been created.

Another notable funding plan has come from St. Louis, where the private nonprofit Forest Park Forever entered into a game-changing partnership with the city in 2013. The 30-year-old agency, long a key player in funding the 1,400-acre, nationally lauded Forest Park, agreed to raise $100 million in endowments for the park and buy $30 million in city bonds that would pay for capital improvements. The city will pay the group back, with interest, over the course of 30 years with money made from existing taxes and park revenue.

And finally, green financing is beginning to take hold in our cities in the form of green bonds and impact investing. While a relatively new approach to supporting the addition of green space in cities, performance based financing models are gaining interest and should be watched closely, especially for green infrastructure projects.

Any of these creative solutions can be implemented IF the city places value above burden.

Impact of Neighborhood Pocket Parks

A pocket park is a small outdoor space, usually no more than ¼ of an acre, usually only a few house lots in size or smaller, most often located in an urban area surrounded by commercial buildings or houses on small lots with few places for people to gather, relax, or to enjoy the outdoors. They are also called vest pocket parks, a term first used in the 1960’s. Pocket parks are urban open spaces on a small-scale and provide a safe and inviting environment for surrounding community members. They also meet a variety of needs and functions, including: small event space, play areas for children, spaces for relaxing or meeting friends, taking lunch breaks, etc. Successful “pocket parks” have four key qualities: they are accessible; allow people to engage in activities; are comfortable spaces and have a good image; and finally, are sociable places: one where people meet each other and take people to when they come to visit.

It is important to note that pocket parks are not intended to service an entire city in the same way as a neighborhood or city park. Each should be created with the specific interests and needs of the contiguous community–that is, the nearby individuals and families for whose use it was originally intended.

Many pocket parks have been created as a result of community groups organizing and rallying for more open space within the urban environment. Leftover spaces and other

urban eyesores present opportunities for conversion to pocket parks, offering important and desirable amenities to communities. These are often purchased and owned by cities, with the agreement that they will be run and maintained by a foundation or other organization if the city is unable to maintain the park itself. The benefits of these unique urban spaces often include one or several of the following:

• Support the overall ecology of the surrounding environment
• Help protect and conserve local wildlife, landscape, and heritage n Reduce pollution, traffic, and consumption of resources, such as oil
• Empower local residents to make decisions that affect their community
• Make communities safer and more sociable
• Improve fitness and health n Regenerate run-down areas
• Reinforce relationships between local authorities and communities

There are many possible funding sources for the development of pocket parks. The Trust for Public Land is one organization that offers assistance with private and public funding for mini-parks (Trust for Public Land, 2009). At the local level, public-private ventures, individual contributions, and philanthropic support are often solicited to underwrite start-up and equipment costs. While some parks are financed almost entirely with private funds, many are typically financed by a combination of various funding sources. For example, capital support for the acquisition, design, and development of the 6th Avenue NW Pocket Park in Seattle, Washington consisted of joint contributions from the Pro Parks Levy, the Neighborhood Matching Fund, and the local community. These organizations continue to contribute towards enhancement of parks including: large lawn areas, landscaping, paths, neighborhood gathering areas and interactive features for children’s play.

Vision for Revitalization: Turning the Status Quo Upside Down

Retailing has changed forever. Big-box stores and category killers; fortress malls; outlet, lifestyle, and power centers; catalogs; and the Internet are where today’s consumers shop. The competition is fierce, and consumers want it all: low prices, endless variety, the latest designs, parking at the door, and an environment so entertaining that they go there even when they don’t need to shop! How can neighborhood streets hope to compete? By providing goods and services tailored to the specific needs of each neighborhood in an environment that is convenient, service-oriented, pedestrian-scaled, and connected to the urban lifestyles of the neighborhood’s residents.

The successful rebuilding of a neighborhood shopping street will be incremental, so it must be based on a shared vision that provides a strategic framework for imagining, analyzing, judging, and implementing each step along the way. The champion of a rebuilding effort is the one best positioned to pull together the diverse partnership of stakeholders to create the long-term vision for the street. Although the champion should make sure that no interests are left behind, the community’s vision must be rooted in market realities. Too often, communities have followed the loudest voices and pursued plans that cannot be sustained economically, which inevitably leads to disappointment and failure. Recognize that there is often a great difference between what one group of stakeholders may want and what the market will support.

Reaching a shared vision requires facing the tough questions upfront, making sure everyone understands the realities of the situation, and setting short-, medium-, and long-range goals that are realistically attainable. There is no cookie-cutter solution that will be effective long term, and pie-in-the-sky doesn’t qualify as vision, so it is essential to understand the reality of the street and what is possible before asking what it can become. There is a general rule: strive to be what you really can be. Most urban streets cannot successfully become like a suburban mall, and it’s doubtful that this would be a good idea even if it were possible. Each retail street needs to be individually crafted to reflect the community, people, lifestyle, and aspirations of its neighborhood because one-size visions do not fit all.

The first task of the public/private partnership is to make sure that the vision is shared. Property owners, residents, and nontraditional neighborhood anchors, such as churches, colleges, and hospitals, must buy in because they have the most at stake. These players have a strong vested interest in the neighborhood environment because their success depends in part on desirability of their surroundings. Large employers should be actively recruited because they have important resources that can be brought to bear.

• Do not allow the rebuilding process to be “hijacked” by any one group or individual—even the residents. It is only natural that stakeholders have agendas; bringing these agendas into the open and aligning them are critical.
• Create momentum for the vision by assigning specific roles to each stakeholder and getting them to buy in to the plan. Getting stakeholders monetarily involved in the process may help to ensure their continued involvement and support.
• Identify negative influences that are hindering the redevelopment effort and neutralize or eliminate them as soon as possible; they could be a person, a building, or a neighborhood condition.
• Create an identity for the street that is inventive and reflects the neighborhood. Some neighborhood streets are already place-specific and have identities that can be reinforced or enhanced. In other cases, the identity is either nonexistent or negative—in which case, changing the perceived identity (or overcoming the nonidentity) will be one of the biggest challenges.
• Adapt the retail environment to serve and enhance the surrounding neighborhood. Serving a broader trade area may be important, but will usually be a secondary goal.
• Recognize that nearby competition not only will dramatically affect the market for your street, but will also affect the vision you have for its future.
• Hire a leasing professional from day one to coordinate management and recruitment of retail tenants. Recognize that retailers will “vote” on the soundness of the redevelopment’s vision by deciding whether to rent or not.

The decline of neighborhood retailing has had a profound effect on the desirability of many urban neighborhoods and communities. The convenient availability of goods and services is a key factor that people consider when choosing a place to live, and neighborhoods without suitable retailing are dramatically weakened. Residents who can afford it, leave, and potential new residents choose to live somewhere else. In this type of environment, communities cannot be sustained over the long term.

The challenges of rebuilding persist not only in low-income neighborhoods, but also in many other urban locations where retailing never recovered from the shift of buying habits that led people to suburban shopping centers. Even in some of the most affluent communities—where first-generation, auto=oriented shopping streets have begun to urbanize and take on characteristics of urban shopping districts. In all cases, rebuilding neighborhood retail streets is a difficult, lengthy, and complicated process. It differs significantly from developing a suburban shopping center or reestablishing downtown shopping districts, so innovative strategies must be employed to restore the neighborhood’s vitality and competitiveness.

Urban Food Security Why It Matters

Food security is defined by the Food and Agriculture Organization as:

“When all people, at all times, have physical, social and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food that meets their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life.”

Food security has four interrelated elements: availability, access, utilization and stability.

Availability is about food supply and trade, not just quantity but also the quality and diversity of food. Improving availability requires sustainable productive farming systems, well managed natural resources, and policies to enhance productivity.

Access covers economic and physical access to food. Improving access requires better market access for smallholders allowing them to generate more income from cash crops, livestock products and other enterprises.

Utilization is about how the body uses the various nutrients in food. A person’s health, feeding practices, food preparation, and diversity of their diet and intra-household distribution of food all affect a person’s nutrition status. Improving utilization requires improving nutrition and food safety, increasing diversity in diets, reducing post-harvest loss and adding value to food.

Stability is about being food secure at all times. Food insecurity can be transitory with short term shocks the result of a bad season, a change in employment status, conflict or a rise in food prices. When prices rise, it is the poor who are most at risk because they spend a much higher portion of their income on food. The poor in the United States, spend 21% of their income on food.  This is a stark contrast to those in developing countries who spend 78% of their income on food. Social nets can play an important role is supporting people through transitory food insecurity.

Historically, there have been two strategies to alleviate issues of food insecurity in the United States. The first has been Federal allocations for food assistant programs, such as Food Stamps and WIC (Women Infants and Children), which are programs managed at the county or municipal level. The second strategy has been the emergency food system, which consist of food banks, food pantries, and soup kitchens. A report issued in early 2006, announced that more than 25 million Americans, including nearly 9 million children and 3 million seniors receive emergency food assistance last year from America’s Second Harvest, a food bank network of charitable agencies. This represented an 8 percent increase since 2001. Though these two strategies have helped to feed millions of food insecure individuals and families, food security continues to represent a major concern for people where sufficient income and healthy food are absent in underserved communities. This issue should be given higher priority by Federal, state, and local agencies as traditional strategies are proving to be only short-term, temporary measures for individual and family well-being.

Over the past two decades there has been an evolution in the way that many local communities have approached food security. An emerging third strategy, community food security, while recognizing the continuing need for federal and emergency food programs, approaches food security with the view that the economic, physical, social and political infrastructure of the local and regional community, when arranged appropriately, are the best resources to alleviate issues of food insecurity. Community food security initiatives focus on viable and long-term strategies that can make healthy, nutritious, and affordable food accessible to an entire community. While the community at large is the focus, there is special concern for getting local and nutritious food into communities where hunger and malnutrition are present, thereby improving individual health in underserved neighborhoods.

Community food security strategies have included improving access to good supermarkets and farmer’s markets, linking local farmers with soup kitchens and food banks, and creating urban gardens in underserved neighborhoods. In addition, farm-to-cafeteria and farm-to institution programs bring regional food directly from farms into communities, challenging fast food cultures and improving the health of youth and adult residents. However, a major challenge for these initiatives has been the fact the cost of local and fresh foods are typically prohibitively too expensive for grocery stores to serve low-income communities or for institutions such as public schools and hospitals to purchase outside of their existing system. In order to make a community food security initiative work, not only does nutritional education need to improve individuals’ knowledge on healthy eating habits and thus increase the demand for healthy, local food, but the issue of cost must be addressed. Additionally, community organizations and local government agencies need to be informed of and linked to each other’s food security initiatives in order to be more effective.

Is your community prepared for success?

It’s Business 101 to have contingency plans in place for when things go wrong. But, conversely, are you prepared for growth and success? What happens when opportunity knocks? What if it turns out your positive expectations were too conservative? What happens if your dreams become a reality?  On a more practical–and likely–note, as the economy shows signs of turning around, are you ready for what that will mean for your community?

Here’s what you need to do to be prepared for growth:

Know what growth means your community

To prepare for something, you have to know what it is and how you’ll recognize it. Growth is more than just hitting a set of numbers–it’s a package that includes changes to your community in terms of operations, maintenance, staffing and facilities. In addition, think about what growth means to you personally. What will your life be like when your community grows and revenues increase? How hard are you going to have to work? Are you ready and willing to do what it takes?

Maintain relationships with your funding sources

 The faster you grow the more cash you’re likely to need. Growth financing is every bit as hard–if not harder–to obtain than initiation funding. Do regular cash-flow projections so that you know how much credit you’re going to need well before you have to start writing checks. Develop and maintain strong relationships with your funding sources and be sure to have primary and backup sources available. In today’s financial climate, it’s harder than ever to predict credit availability, so stay on top of your cash and financial needs to give yourself have plenty of room to maneuver when it’s time to borrow.

Get comfortable being in the spotlight

Successful leaders in growing communities are almost always in the spotlight to some degree–maybe not always to the general public but certainly within similar market cities and communities. Be prepared for a level of attention that you probably haven’t received before.

Hire people based on where you want to be, not where you are

The team that can successfully run a $1 million community is not the same team that can run a $100 million community. If your goal is growth, hire people who can perform in the size community you want to be–they’ll help you get there.

Put the right people in the right places

The right people doing the right jobs are absolutely critical to sustain growth. Whole person assessments and job benchmarking will allow you to take a systematic approach to hiring and career development, which will reduce your mis-hires and employee turnover.

Take care of your people

Your employees are what keep you successful. Recognize and reward that. Working in a high-growth initiative is stressful and challenging. Take note of your employees’ work and respond appropriately, or risk losing top talent. Create an environment where people are willing to work through the growing pains. In addition, take care of your partners, advisors and anyone else who can have an effect on your developing community.

Listen to the experts

You may be an expert in one area, but you don’t know it all. What’s more, there often will be experts who know more about particular parts of an industry or market segment than the  insiders. Identify the experts, listen to them and learn from them. Let them help smooth out your learning curves and keep you on your growth track.

Stay close to your “customers”

No community can do without “customers,” and if you don’t stay close to them, you’ll lose them. Know what they need, but more important, know what they want and do everything you can to give that to them. Most important, communicate. Never let your residents or visitors wonder what’s going on. Tell them–whether it’s good or bad.

Focus on your core business and don’t get distracted

 Stick to the business your community knows best. Be sure any diversification or expansion you do makes sense.  If it has nothing to do with your core offering don’t get into it just because it seems like a good opportunity. Otherwise, you’ll you confuse your residents and visitors–and you’ll likely find that dividing your efforts reduces the quality and profitability of everything.

Just as you plan for when things go wrong, also plan for when things go well. When you’re prepared for growth, you can better manage the changes it brings and let it take you to the goal you set when you started.

Viable community economic development involves the use of a comprehensive package of strategies and tools, rather than a piecemeal approach

The capstone lesson is, perhaps, a reaffirmation of a point that we have heard over and over again: there is no silver bullet. No single strategy saved any community. Successful development in small towns is always multifaceted. Small towns should take nothing off the table in selecting strategies to pursue. Successful communities tend to have evolved to the point where they have a comprehensive package of strategies and tools that are aligned with the core assets, challenges and opportunities within their regional context.

Furthermore, given the basic strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats affecting each community and the virtually limitless menu of possible strategies, no single package of strategies necessarily fits with a particular type of community. That is, there is no universally applicable formula for community development. Decisions about what to do and why to do it have to be based on local conditions, context and capacity. The lessons from these successful small towns, however, provide insights and inspiration for other community leaders as they begin the important process of building locally driven strategies that create economic opportunities and improve the social, civic and environmental conditions that face their hometowns.

Effective communities identify, measure and celebrate short term successes to sustain support for long term community economic development.

Given the long-term nature of community development, and the fact that measurable results from a particular project may be decades in the making, leaders in small towns must repeatedly make the case for the importance of their efforts. Making the case is important to maintain momentum, invigorate volunteers and donors, convince skeptics and, most importantly, keep the focus on the vision or the goals established in a community’s strategic plan. Many of the communities recognize that making the case is an ongoing and continuous effort and that there are a number of strategies for doing it.

 

First, short-term success can build long-term momentum. Obviously, the best way to make the case for any intervention is to demonstrate success. By starting with “low-hanging fruit,” city leaders can demonstrated that change is possible. Once people started seeing change happen, there is more of an incentive to join in the process. Short-term success is a means for making the case that particular community economic development activities are worth the investment.

 
Second, many communities make an explicit effort to measure and monitor the impacts of their efforts. It seems obvious, but measuring progress and evaluating programs tend to get pushed to the end of priority lists. Not so in successful small towns. In successful smaller communities impacts of the community’s development programs are monitored and become useful for both external and internal audiences. Data is used to attract additional investment from outside sources. Moreover, by demonstrating a reasonable return on investment, this data may be used to convince a community’s naysayers to join the efforts.
Finally, successful small towns tend to communicate and celebrate success. Community leaders work hard to keep local papers informed about various economic development projects and publicize even the most modest success, including stories of local entrepreneurial successes. Leaders spend an ever-increasing amount of time publishing newsletters and writing articles for the local newspaper. They send emails to as many residents as possible and appear on radio broadcasts regularly. The idea is to replace rumors and coffee shop chatter with accurate information about what the community is trying to accomplish.

Defining assets and opportunities broadly can yield innovative strategies that capitalize on a community’s competitive advantage

In almost any setting – urban or rural, small or large – shell buildings, low tax rates, limited regulation and access to trained workers, highways, railroads or professional services might all be considered economic development assets and justifiably so. Small towns, however, cannot afford to stop there. Given limited sources of competitive advantage, they must redefine economic development assets in a much broader framework.
For example, Allendale, S.C., capitalized on a regional university to create a local leadership development program that, in turn, trained new economic development leaders for the entire region. Brevard, N.C., demonstrates that retirees within a community can be economic development assets. The Retiree Resource Network is a group of retirees with private sector experience who mentor local entrepreneurs. In Columbia, N.C., local leaders recognized that their region’s natural beauty was an asset that could drive an ecotourism strategy.  In an ironic twist on small town development, the arrival of WalMart became an asset for the small community of Oakland, Maryland, when local leaders took the opportunity to help Main Street retailers diversify their product lines. Assets for small town development might include individual people, not-for-profit organizations, businesses, open space, farms, parks, landfills (biomass), museums, schools, historic architecture, local attitudes or any number of other things.
Further, the mere fact that a particular town is small can become an asset. In some cases, locating a business in a small town can provide a competitive advantage for the business. In Fairfield, Iowa, local leaders are taking advantage of the perception that businesses located in small-town, rural locations carry a moral and ethical standard above their urban competitors. Civic and business leaders in Fairfield have exploited this perception to their competitive advantage. In Oxford, N.C., the Kerr-Tar Mini Hub concept is based on the idea that rural communities within driving distance of the Research Triangle Park can capture a market of technology companies that need to be near the park, but can thrive outside it, where business costs are lower.
A final emerging trend is the increasing use of small town assets as either fuel or triggers for innovation in the area of environment-friendly development or clean energy. In Dillsboro, N.C., the town turned an environmental challenge, in this case methane gas migrating from the community landfill, into an opportunity to create jobs and provide space for entrepreneurs.  The Jackson County Clean Energy Park (in Dillsboro) is using methane gas from a nearby landfill to power the studios of local artisans. In Cape Charles, Virginia, the town’s investment in an eco-friendly industrial park was an innovative strategy to bridge the dual challenges of environmental degradation and job creation. And, in the most extreme case, Reynolds, Indiana, is capitalizing on latent energy contained agricultural waste from 150,000 hogs to become BioTown, USA, the nation’s first energy-independent community.

Successful community economic development strategies are guided by a broadly held local vision

Most small town communities demonstrate the importance of establishing and maintaining a broadly held vision, including goals for all manner of development activities.  This idea is perhaps illustrated most dramatically by Helena, Arkansas, where the inclusiveness of the planning and visioning process was crucially important. In this case, it included representatives from government, community organizations, for-profit and not-for-profit interests, resource providers and average citizens of the community. In fact, anybody could join the effort, and this perception of an inclusive and open-door process was widespread across Helena. Similarly in Ord, Nebraska, where so much of the momentum comes from one-on-one conversations, local leaders take the time to meet individually with members of the community to ensure that opposition to development efforts does not take root for lack of understanding the larger vision. In terms of maintaining momentum, Douglas, Georgia, demonstrates how a local organization (the Chamber of Commerce) can take responsibility for calling stakeholders together on a regular basis to recommit themselves to the community’s vision.

 

A separate but related point is that in small towns, people are always the most important resource and communities with limited resources cannot afford to exclude anyone from planning or development efforts. Pelican Rapids, Minnesota, appears to be on the front end of an economic reawakening based on the entrepreneurial tendencies of new immigrant residents who were settled in the area by various refugee organizations. Case after case has demonstrated that people (as opposed to money or other resources) are the one absolutely necessary ingredient to successful development. A committed group of local residents who are willing to work hard for their community’s interests can change the fate of an otherwise hopeless community. In Nelsonville, Ohio, an informal group of civic entrepreneurs and artists came together to revitalize the historic downtown square and in the process injected a new dose of energy into the community.

Importantly, it seems, special attention needs to be paid toward integrating newcomers into the community. Newcomers, including young leaders, bring a fresh perspective and new energy to local challenges. In Douglas, Georgia, local leaders recognized that newcomers are valuable assets and the town has worked hard to integrate new residents into the community.  In Farmville, N.C., new residents are welcomed every spring, when the mayor and town manager invite all newcomers to a “New Residents Picnic.” In Nelsonville, Ohio, several young professionals, including an attorney and real estate developer, are forcing the community to think creatively about new economic opportunities.