I’ve been asked to combine my seven posts on the so-called “North Business Park” into a single post. Apparently, it is believed that this reorganization will stimulate comments. Continue reading My Concerns and Questions about the So-called Business Park Combined in One Post
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If I don’t think we should have annexed 530 acres located 3 ½ miles from our community’s center and 3 ½ miles from the interstate highway (neither here nor there), what do I think we should have done? I think we should have identified 120 acres next to our existing infrastructure, close to our existing amenities, and near to our existing business districts. Perhaps you remember the “Troublesome Trio”, the late Ron Griffith, Alice Thomas, and myself. We were the three Planning Commissioners who advocated for serious and substantive exploration of alternative sites for addition to our inventory of industrial land. We favored further consideration of sites near our existing industrial districts. Specifically, we wanted to consider sites between Dresden Avenue and Highway 3 at the north edge of town and sties between Armstrong Road and Highway 19 on the west edge of town. Both of these locations are yards, not miles, from existing infrastructure. Both of these areas are connected to the existing network of roads. Finally, both of these potential sites have railroad access. This last aspect, railroad access, changed the Troublesome Trio into the Fulsome Four at the time of the vote, with then-Chair Greg Colby joining us. As you may have noticed, I think the Northwest Territory is a bad location. I don’t think it will succeed, at least in our lifetime. I don’t think this plan would pass a financial cost-benefit analysis and, at the very least, I don’t think it’s a good investment of $30 million of taxpayer money. I also don’t think the existing transportation network is anywhere near adequate. This is also the lack of access to the railroad. Finally, much of the land in the Northwest Territory is swamp, or, if you prefer, hydric soil. It will be difficult to develop, and, as local dirt work expert and Chamber board president Jim Gleason noted, it will be very expensive to develop. Frankly, I’m not sure the project will pass an Environmental Assessment Worksheet. When I raised this concern, twice, at the Planning Commission, my concerns were dismissed by the Community Development Director with “Don’t even worry about it”. The good news is that we’ve only spent $250,00 for the most recent consultant and probably about that much on staff time. There’s still time to change the road we’re on…we haven’t spent the $30 million yet. Let’s sit down with Waterford and Bridgewater and tell them that Northfield needs 120 acres of industrial land. Let’s do more than just talk about regional collaboration, let’s work with our neighbors to meet Northfield’s economic needs in a way that also respects their vision of the future. With more focused specifications for our industrial land development plan, a realistic project scale for our community’s actual needs, and an implementation approach that will produce quicker results and more feasible financing, we will not only be more likely to achieve our goal of producing more industrial land but help to insure that the ultimate project developments will be more successful. There’s yet another installment in the “let’s build a business park” series. The most recent piece is by Planning Commissioner Tracy Davis. Her thesis is that we have adequate space for living, playing and shopping but we lack space for business expansion and recruitment. Tracy quotes the Comprehensive Plan, saying Northfield’s intent is to “promote economic development by…increasing the availability of commercial and industrial land”. Tracy recognizes concerns about the Master Plan, particularly the cost of infrastructure and what she calls “the limited housing and retail” in the plan. She also admits that the plan does not address the economics of development, which I assume means a cost-benefit analysis. Finally, she contends that the City has tools to ensure quality development and mitigate adverse consequences. In spite of admitting that Northfield has a poor record of institutional memory, political will, and, some might add, keeping promises, Tracy expresses confidence that actual results will match the initial vision. Tracy, I’m tempted to quote the New York Times’ “go-to” Northfield Planning Commissioner by saying, “What a bunch of crap”. Instead, I’ll say that it just doesn’t make sense to me. The estimated cost of infrastructure, according to the Master Plan, is $29.4 million. Assuming that the business park is 100% developed according to the consultants’ plan, it will take over 12 years before the financial benefits exceed the costs, and that doesn’t include a time-value of money or bond interest payments. Until then, Northfield’s taxpayers will be bearing this $30 million burden. Phase 1 of the plan calls for 570 units of housing, 87,000 square feet of retail, 708,000 of office space, 635,000 of light industrial and industrial space, and 120 hotel rooms. Phase 2 shows an additional 81,675 square feet of office space and 110,000 square feet of “civic” space. In my opinion, it’s not really a business park, it’s a so-called “lifestyle center”. Yes Tracy, it is possible to shape the development through Northfield’s planning process. However, if the project does not achieve development and/or occupancy as Master Planned, how long many years will taxpayers bear the burden, or the Council resist the pressure, before Northfield decides to let go of the original plan and build another 600 units of housing, a Zantigo, a Jiffy Lube, and a WalMart? Sure, our process will increase the possibility that the designs will be more fitting with our sense of place. The Zantigo will have a traditional neighborhood bistro look, the Jiffy Lube will feature rear entry access, and the façade of the WalMart will be broken up with architectural details. Ultimately local taxpayers will have invested $30 million to create a mini suburb of housing and retail halfway between Northfield and Highway 35. Tracy, you know that going back to the late Ron Griffith’s request over three years ago, a cost-benefit analysis has never been provided because it just doesn’t add up. Tracy, you know that it is only by a huge stretch of a very flexible imagination that this business park fits our Comprehensive Plan. Tracy, you know that our tools to control development won’t be enforced long enough for the ink to dry. As I said Tracy, it just doesn’t make sense to me. I didn’t know that Rick Estenson was such a big fan of FDR; he quotes our longest-serving president twice in the fourth of a series of pro-business park guest columns. Next time I see Rick, I’ll have to ask him for a recommendation on a biography. In the next installment in the guest column series, Rick argues that our current recession has sapped the confidence of Northfielders. He seems to suggest that we no longer believe that we can work through our problems. Apparently, Rick thinks the people of Holland, Michigan have the confidence to work through their problems. Holland, located jut up the river from Lake Michigan, has a population of 34,000, the surrounding suburbs bring the total to 95,394, and the Metropolitan Statistical Area has an estimated population of 260,364. It’s not exactly Northfield. Rick notes that Holland had a more developed industrial base than Northfield. In fact, he says that those industrial businesses and their employees provided economic benefits to Holland’s downtown. At the same time, I would suggest, the existing restaurant, retail and service businesses supported Holland’s business parks. Finally, Rick argues that only by creating this new business park will we solve the City’s budget problems through growing the tax base. Frankly, with a $29.4 million investment, it will take many millions of dollars in taxes and many years of payments before the business park might actually produce a positive financial impact for the citizens of Northfield. In my mind, it has nothing to do with the optimism or pessimism or confidence or doubt of the people of Northfield. It’s all about simple arithmetic. A handful of our leaders have been pushing the business park in the Northwest Territory for three years. I asked for a cost estimate of the infrastructure in the very beginning, offering my own which ranged from $15 to $40 million depending on the amount of development. Now, finally, we hear it will be $29.4 million. Northfield taxpayers are facing a $2 million annual municipal budget deficit, are being asked to pay $15 million for two new safety centers (oops, $11 million for a new safety center), $8 million for a library expansion, who knows how many millions for our deteriorating streets and sewer and water systems, and how much of our pension liability is funded. However, this handful of our leaders are telling us that the $29.4 million will be a winning investment. The series of guest columns supporting the business park have presented many arguments. The business park will save our families, the business park will save our environment, the business park will attract manufacturing, and the business park will be a financial boon. The bottom line for me is clear. It just doesn’t add up…not even close. If we can truly attract new businesses with high-paying jobs by developing new spaces for them, let’s do it in a place where the costs are more in line with the benefits. If we are going to bring new businesses to town, let’s support them with our existing businesses, not use their tax payments to create new competitors. If we’re going to put some many of our economic development apples into a business park basket, let’s quit spending money on spinning rhetoric in the newspaper. Let’s just see if it really adds up. In the third of the occasionally to press series of guest columns in support of the business park, City of Northfield Economic Development Director Jody Gunderson shares his vision for Northfield’s economic future. He begins the piece by saying that the EDA has a two-prong approach to economic development, supporting our existing business districts while creating a new one. Jody largely dismisses downtown as consisting of a few small retail shops. Downtown has always historically been and continues to be, at least for right now, Northfield’s central business district. While about a quarter of the downtown busineses are retailers, including four banks, over half of the businesses are office users. These office users include architects, engineers, investment firms, designers, publishers, health-care providers, and several software developers. In fact, many prominent economic development experts would characterize these office users as the emerging American economy. Once called knowledge workers, more recently tagged the creative class, these businesses use few resource besides their brains to generate economic vitality. These people are attracted to our historic downtown, with its offering of restaurants and retailers, our wild an scenic rivers, and our excellent public schools. When asked, they also generally mention the many options in our arts, culture and recreation. Jody then moves on to the second prong of the EDA’s work, the Master Plan for the 530-acre annexation northwest of the hospital. Although he notes that “only time and the market place will tell” if the business park will succeed, he tells us that several developer have made positive comments about the plan. I guess I’d say that only time, the market, and any return on the $29.4 million in infrastructure will tell if the business park has a chance of success. Then he says we should decide what kind of businesses we should try to recruit for the business park. Jody advocates a focus on manufacturing companies, noting that this type of business typically generates more jobs than a retail business. I applaud Jody’s desire to attract manufacturing businesses. This seems to be an underserved area of the Northfield economy, at least when compared to Faribault and Lakeville. In fact, with the Master Plan showing Phase 1 as mostly retail and Phase 2 as mostly housing, I had started to wonder what was really driving this project. However, as Jody noted earlier in the piece, the market plays a key role in determining the success or failure of even the best laid master plan. I just don’t see how Northfield will succeed in the competitive market for manufacturing businesses. I’m no highly-paid professional, but it seems to me that Faribault and Lakeville have a few advantages over Northfield in attracting manufacturing businesses. Both these other communities have a substantial base of manufacturing companies, the workforce to support these types of businesses, a much better location on the interstate highway, and a lower cost of land. If I were a leader of Northfield, with power and resources, I would be investing in the first prong of the EDA’s economic development strategy, our existing business districts. In my opinion, $29.4 million is too much to place on a single bet, especially one where the odds seemed stacked against success. Following in Councilor Pokorney’s, Councilor Erica Zweifel recently wrote a guest column for the Northfield News. I found it to be a curious piece. Erica opened with her commitment to sustainability. She identified what she believes to be core principals of sustainability: Compact Development, Multi-Modal Transportation, Open Spaces, and Mixed Land Use. I have had a number of substantive intellectual exchanges with Erica, and I know that she is indeed committed to the concept of sustainability. However, I don’t see the business park as an implementation of the principals of sustainability. My understanding of Compact Development is that you should expand to continuous areas. Although a connection between the business park site was created through a back-filling annexation and a modification in the the original request, looking at it on a map makes me think of a turkey’s head and neck, sticking out from the body of Northfield. I understand that the Master Plan has sketched bike trails round the new development, part of Multi-Modal Transportation. I also remember the, I think, eight-page letter from MNDoT to the City, raising transportation concerns for this business park, summarized by a state official and a local developer as “you can’t get there from here”. I would imagine that a large percentage of the land will be preserved as Open Space in order to absorb and filter stormwater, reducing the pollution that runs into our stream and rivers. This makes a lot of sense, since much of the site is hydric soils, what I call swamp, others call marsh, and, I believe, is technically considered to be wetland. As the local expert on site preparation said, it will be very expensive land to develop. Mixed Use Land development is all the rage these days. It’s really a return to traditional community design, where people lived, worked, and played in the same neighborhood. When a few of our leaders were pushing this project so vigorously two years ago, they told us that a new business park would bring new customers to our two existing retail districts, downtown and uptown. I don’t understand why the most recent plans for the business park have tens of thousands of square feet in retail in the first phase of the project. I just don’t see any sustainability in the heart of this proposal, in spite of the “green” details decorating the margins of the plan. A sustainable business park would be next door or across the street from our existing infrastructure and transportation modes (including rail), not in a corn field or wetland, and would support our existing restaurants, retail and service businesses, not bring in new, out-of-town, national-chain competitors. The Master Plan may have served a purpose. It has shown that the concept advanced by a few of our leaders for the past two or three years is of doubtful feasibility and questionable value. I hope that our leaders will learn from this process and redirect our scarce resources to an appropriate scale development, in a location that gets leverage from our existing infrastructure and gives leverage to our existing businesses, that results in a truly sustainable plan and development. Councilor Jim Pokorny recently wrote a guest column for the Northfield News. In it, he talked about growing up in Hibbing. He noted that the town gave him a good start in life, with good school for kids and good amenities for families. According to Jim, however, all is not well in Hibbing. He says that Hibbing has struggled to create jobs, has a lifeless downtown, and has a lack of opportunity. Jim cites Hibbing as a cautionary tale for Northfield. Jim argues that, in order to avoid Hibbing’s fate, Northfield needs to attract and retain entrepreneurs and young families by building a business park. Actually, based on demographic studies to both the Planning Commission’s Comprehensive Plan and the EDA’s Comprehensive Economic Development Plan, Northfield does a great job attracting young families. In fact, it does better than most cities in Minnesota. I agree with Jim, however, Northfield should work hard to attract and retain entrepreneurs. Based on what I’ve seen and heard, in the past five to ten years, Northfield has been fairly successful in attracting people like Jim’s high school friends, the pediatric surgeon, the software entrepreneur, the architect, the graphic designer, and the plant manager. Several of these recently arrived professionals have started new businesses in Northfield. These people have told me that they were attracted to Northfield because ot the culture, the schools, and the historic downtown, as well as the colleges, the river, and the arts. Their comments, I believe, identify our community’s strengths. If Hibbing is having trouble attracting entrepreneurs and young families, maybe they lack some of Northfield’s strengths. Maybe to make up for the lack of these strengths, Hibbing needs to build a business park. In fact, Hibbing has a business park. It has 323 acres designated as a JOBZ Zone and 150 acres that are attached to its airport. Perhaps creating a business park is not the key to stimulating economic growth. My wife and I visited Hibbing, boyhood home of Bob Dylan, for our anniversary last year. It was a two and a half hour drive from Silver Bay and an hour and a half drive from Duluth. Maybe Hibbing’s somewhat isolated location causes young people like Bob Dylan, Jeno Palucci, Roger Maris, Rudy Perpich, Robert Mondavi, and Kevin McHale to seek bigger venues for their talents. Maybe that’s why Jim’s high school friends now live in the Twin Cities. Again, I’ll agree with Jim, it’s easy to criticize spending $250,000 for a Master Plan as a an unnecessary long-term expenses, particularly during a period when so many of our existing businesses are struggling. I’ll admit, I’ve heard more than one person express just such criticism. Perhaps they’ll spend the next $250,000 promoting Northfield’s identified assets: our culture, our schools, and our downtown, the colleges, the river, and the arts. I am enthusiastically and vigorously supportive of increasing the availability of land for industrial development in Northfield. I support the recommendation of the EDA’s consultant, TIP Strategies, for making an additional 120 acres available for industrial use. Although these same consultants suggested that 120 acres could be found in Northfield’s existing inventory of in-fill and redevelopment opportunities, I am supportive of former EDA member and local real estate professional Paul Smith’s advice that two 30 acre and one 60 acre parcels of clear, undeveloped greenfield be added to Northfield’s land inventory. I am supportive of securing this land in a manner that is as quick and affordable as is practical. More importantly, I am supportive of securing land that can get leverage from our existing infrastructure of water, sewer, roads, and amenities. Perhaps most important of all, I am supportive of this new industrial land providing additional economic leverage to our existing business base of restaurants, retail, and services. I am not supportive of developing land 3 ½ miles from our existing commercial districts and 3 ½ miles from the interstate. I am not supportive of spending tens of millions of dollars of taxpayer money to create new infrastructure. I am not supportive of developing a site for almost 600 hundred units of housing, over a hundred units of hotel rooms, almost 100,000 square feet of retail space, and over 700,000 square feet of office space. I have tried hard to be convinced by this Master Plan for the Northwest Territory. I so much wanted to believe in this vision that has been enthusiastically, vigorously, and richly supportive by a handful of our leaders. When the EDA hired a P. R. professional to work with some of these leaders on guest columns, I really hoped I’d be convinced. However, those guest columns just raised my concerns and sharpened my doubts. Let me be clear about two things. First, the beliefs expressed in my responses to the guest columns are completely and solely my own. My employers, my family, and my bandmates probably don’t agree with some, maybe most, of my thoughts. Second, I was not paid by anyone to write these pieces, nor was any professional hired to assist me in their creation, and, finally, they were all produced on my own time, at my own expense, at night and on weekends, and thus may lack the polish of professionally produced pieces. Perhaps some of you can help convince me that the Master Plan for the Northwest Territory is a good idea. In fact, I’d really appreciate it. It would be great to to lose my concerns and be able to heart cheer on this ambitious quest.
This morning I heard one of our local leaders say that the City of Northfield had cut the General Fund Budget by $1.5 million. Wow, last I heard, our General Fund Budget was $10.5 million. $1.5 million would be an almost 15% cut. Such a reduction in expenditures would be impressive. So I decided I’d conduct a little research of the available facts…and do a little simple arithmetic. Continue reading Do the Math Recently a few of our public officials acknowledged what many astute observers had been discussing for months. The City of Northfield needs to address a $2 million budget deficit. After experiencing property tax increases of over 300 percent since 2000, commercial property owners have been encouraging City leaders to balance the budget without another property tax increase or the creation of additional fees. Most business leaders, indeed many private citizens, have had to balance their own budgets in the face of declining income, and they understand that cutting costs often means reducing services. In at least three discussions with local business leaders, Mayor Rossing has suggested that if the City needs to cut costs, they could look at cutting Police, Fire, and Snowplowing. The question that came to my mind, “Are these the services citizens would most want to cut?”. Based on conversations I’ve had with a variety of people, I believe the answer is, “No.” Several groups in town have been asking for greater citizen participation in City budget balancing since at least last November, when many of their members were already predicting the coming crisis. However, some of our City leaders have resisted citizen involvement. Very recently, the Council discussed the possible creation of some kind of citizen advisory group to analyze City spending and to recommend changes. But now it’s July and the fiscal year is half over. Northfield has valued and encouraged citizen participation in the big issues of the day since John North set up his Debating Society shortly after founding the town. One hundred and fifty or so years later, we’ve probably got more Web 2.0 tools per capita in this town than any other community in Minnesota. In the award-winning and best-selling 2006 book “Wikinomics”, authors Tapscott and Williams suggested that we open source government. As the many of the most progressive and successful private sector organizations have realized, we’ll make better decisions if we tap the insights of a broader segment of the population. So let’s “wiki” a City budget. A few of us have met informally over lunch in recent weeks to share gathered City budget information. One product of our group’s efforts is posted within this piece. We consider it to be merely a starting point for further discussion.
I encourage you to review the attachment and consider how your $11 million are spent. If you were trying to cut $2 million, would it be library hours, park maintenance, or the Spanish interpreter? Would you instead look at cutting back on police, fire, and snow-plowing? Or would you look at other areas of the budget? Griff has discussed several techie tools that might be appropriate for a citizens’ “vote” on funding municipal services. Mayor Rossing has publicly pondered a survey of citizen priorities. Frankly, I’m about ready to set up 7 labeled cans in the coffeehouses and taverns around town and hand out 9 dollars worth of wooden quarters to interested citizens. But citizen input gathering is the next step. Right now, I would encourage you to review and contemplate where your money is being spent. Think about your priorities moving forward, in a new economic reality, and be ready to share them with all of the people of Northfield.
I found the following statements to reaffirm much of what I’ve learned in my almost thirty years in business development, real estate development, community development, and economic development: Continue reading Government policy and its effect on small business
Know the answer, contact Hayes. I’m sure there’s a nifty prize…or at least he’ll buy you a drink at their upcoming auction.
Most significantly, at least in my mind, he notes that a “liveable city” means different things for different people. It’s all about your priorities: access to freeways or access to wi-fi. His evaluation system uses the following categories: size, density, sensibility and attitude, security, chaos and danger, human scale, parking, boulevards, mixed-use, and public spaces. I don’t agree with everything he says, I certainly value parking more than he does, but he definitely raises some interesting ideas. One of his thoughts was extremely appealing to me, “In my perfect city there would always be something going on nearby.” However, I’ll admit, from 1977 to 1987, one of my priorities was the Talking Heads.
I’m always interested in new ideas, from growing or dying cities, so I quickly dove into the piece. However, much to my shock, one of the cities was Springfield, Massachusetts. Continue reading Not SPRINGFIELD!?!
Number one is Louisville, Co, number two is Chanhassan, MN, number three is Papillion, NE, number four is Middleton, WI, and number five is Milton, MA. (Hmmm, I used to wrestle against Milton in high school; we called them the rich kids.) There’s several Minnesota towns in the top 100. In fact, the upper Midwest is very well represented in the list. Continue reading What Makes These Towns the Best?
The study is about public support of private initiatives. It looks at the goals of the public support, the decision-making process, and the quantifiable results. From my reading, it appears that things went pretty well in Austin until fairly recently and then there were some projects that, to say the least, did not achieve the desired results. The study also includes recommendations for improving the economic development and public incentives processes in Austin. I’m not sure that I agree with all of the objectives of the group that initiated the work or all their opinions on the causes and effects of the less than successful projects. However, I thought their analysis of the economic development and the evaluation/decision processes was quite useful. Continue reading Building a Sustainable Economy — Austin Style I got this Tweet from Finance and Commerce earlier today and thought it might be of interest to some Locally Grown readers:
I haven’t had time to explore the tool. I’m interested in hearing from architects, engineers, builders, and developers about whether or not they think it is a worthwhile tool.
Perhaps you’ve noticed that sometimes when my gravatar appears next to comments on Locally Grown, I’m wearing a Grateful Dead hat. Admittedly, I was a big Dead fan from about 1972 to about 1978. It’s not that I stopped liking them, it was just that during that period of time I thought that they were amazing. About a year ago, Len Witt, of RepJ fame, referenced an article by New York Times columnist Paul Krugman (who in some ways has kind of become my creative/intellectual substitute for Jerry Garcia) titled “Bits, Bands and Books” but became known as the “We are All the Grateful Dead” piece. Of course, I had to immediately track it down. Now this morning I got a Tweet from Jim Fusilli, rock critic for the Wall Street Journal, referencing a further development of that theme. It’s an article by Chicago Tribune columnist Greg Knot titled “Grateful Dead Ahead of its Time“. Knot gets deeper into the details of the Dead than Krugman. Both pieces quote Esther Dyson saying that businesses and individuals would have to “distribute intellectual property free in order to sell services and relationships.” Back when I was earning my MBA from St. Thomas in St. Paul, I had heard that there was a Harvard Business School Case Study about the Grateful Dead’s business model. I searched in vain for it. Now, with the internet, perhaps I’ll restart my search, and hopefully be more successful this time. But you all know that this post is just an excuse to put up another picture of the Grateful Dead on Locally Grown.
Also creating some buzz, at least at the Studio Opening, was a visit from The President. That would be the president of Summit Brewing. Apparently he’s in town tonight, conducting an official tour of local establishments The Cow, Froggy’s, Fieldhouse, and The Rueb. My understanding is that it’s got something to do with Red Ale. I sure hope Griff gets back soon. My photography skills are barely adequate for a studio opening, I’m sure my hands would shake too much if I were to try to capture a President. Some Minnesotans’ spirits rise with the crocuses, mine are boosted by the return As always, I like the Twins’ chances this year. Sure, there are some questions surrounding some players or situations but the other teams in the AL Central would probably trade their doubts for those questions. It’s the last home opener at The Dome, tonight, 7:10 p.m., against the Seattle Mariners. Go Twins!
Battling against Big Brother’s control of reading material, first through an oligarchical position in the on-line supply and more recently in a nearly monopolistic share of the electronic consumption, these determined sons for literary liberty are distributing books that are made of paper and ink. Not discouraged by the scorn of the Kindle-lites, the paperback patriots are turning pages for self-determination. It is clear from this snapshot that the soundtrack for their struggle will be provided by The Clash. Not THIS city…Lancaster, California. The City In today’s Wall Street Journal, there’s an article titled “Cities and States Take Stabs At Reviving Local Economies“. The piece outlines the efforts of local governments to support their local economies in these challenging times. In addition to the shop local gift cards, Lancaster is covering vehicle-registration fees for anyone who buys a new car in town. Other communities are pursuing different ideas. Newark, N.J. is using $1 million trust fund to guarantee bonding for small-scale contractors hoping to get a piece of the federal construction spending. New York, N.Y. is offering office space with computers and kitchens for $200 a month per person and seeding a $3 million “angel investment fund” for start-ups. San Francisco is accessing federal funds to offer small businesses $23 million in no-interest loans. These unusual times call for non-traditional programs. Anyone in the Locally Grown network have some creative ideas to offer our City Council?
The presenter, Kathy LaPlante of the Main Street Center, quickly moved through 100 examples of business promotions from communities all around the United States. They ranged from “Earlier than the Bird” in Livermore, California, through “Let’s Wine about Winter” in Libertyville, Illinois, to “Shop Your Ath Off” in Athens, Georgia. The creativity generated by all of these grass roots efforts was quite impressive. (continued) Continue reading Promoting Local Business AND Building Our Community
Demetrio gave a presentation on using social media and on-line communication to promote your main street, or downtown district, at the Main Street 2.0 Conference. He works at Community Media Workshop, also found at “newstips.org“. I guess if I were to try to summarize their mission, it would be to help the voiceless find their voices through new media. (continued) Continue reading Demetrio Maguigad Tells Me to Twitter at Main Street 2.0
After the “L” ride from O’Hare to The Loop, in between registration and the first session, I thought I’d do a little sight-seeing. I spent one summer in Chicago during college. I lived a few block from Victor Arrigo Park and worked in Water Tower Place, on the north end of the Magnificent Mile. I think it was 1979, the year of the Disco Disaster in Comiskey Park. (continued) Continue reading It Takes a Millennium |
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