"Since it’s the busiest shopping day of the year, our customers—sometimes known as citizens—are demanding that we be responsive," Madagascar said. " Northfield Target is opening at midnight and we want to be ready to serve those folks who might want to apply for a license, make a reservation, or submit an application for the council vacancy when they’re done shopping.  It’s part of our mission—striving for excellence, committed to service."

On Tuesday, Northfield Area Chamber of Commerce Executive Director Katarina Fellbore announced that their Northfield Convention and Visitors Bureau office at 205 3rd St. West would open just after midnight on Black Friday as well.

"My Board of Directors thinks it’s an opportunity for us to tell the out-of-towners who will be heading to Northfield Target all the great things about shopping in Northfield," said Fellbore. "Frankly, I think that’s a stretch, since no other stores are opening at that hour. Nonetheless, we’ll be open, handing out CVB brochures and selling our line of Buy More cards that we have left over from last year."

When asked whether it might be more cost-effective for the City and the Chamber to be offering these services via their websites 24X7, both indicated that e-commerce was something they’d be adding in the next five years or so. "Online shopping is likely to catch on with the public by then and when it does, we’ll be ready for it," said Fellbore.

But, yes, this Thursday (July 28th) is Crazy Daze in downtown Northfield.  Starting at 8 a.m. with activities until 8 p.m., it’s a whole lot of fun brought to you by the Retail Committee of the Northfield Area Chamber of Commerce.

This year’s events include a Watermelon Seed Spittting Contest, 11:00 a.m., Just Food; Bean Bag Toss, 1:30 p.m., Fine Threads; Hula Hoop Contest, 2:00 p.m., Rare Pair; and Classic Cars, 5 p.m., on Division Street between 5th and 6th Streets.

But a glance at the home pages of Northfield.org, the Northfield News, Northfield Patch, and KYMN at 6:15 am this morning reveals a complete lack of information about Crazy Daze.

The Northfield Area Chamber of Commerce (the main sponsor of Crazy Daze) lists the event on its community calendar page but  with this feeble, generic paragraph:

Don’t miss this crazy shopping spree in downtown Northfield every July. Fantastic bargains are provided by local retailers. Call for details and times for special events taking place all day! (507) 645 5604 or (800) 658 2548.

The featured event page on the Chamber’s Convention and Bureau’s site is even more cryptic:

Don’t miss this crazy shopping spree in downtown Northfield every July. Fantastic bargains are provided by local retailers.

nor is there any mention of the event on the Visiting Northfield Facebook page, nor on the Be Local Northfield Facebook page.

Last year, the Chamber had a Crazy Daze poster/flyer.  Was there one this year? I’ve not seen it in store windows, but maybe I’ve just missed it.

Something has failed.

In case their Calendar page gets updated, seen the screenshot.

The Planning Commission packet states on Page 33:

The letter from Chamber Board of Directors contains five broad points that are not specific but contain content that the Commission should be able to respond to. These five broad points can be summarized as follows:

1. Land Development Code needs more flexibility for commercial areas to allow for business diversity.

2. The Code needs to identify areas for industrial development, specifically the proposed Business Park.

3. Restrictions on college owned property undermines their ability to effectively utilize their property.

4. Residential zoned areas need more flexibility so property owners can build what customers want to live in.

5. The LDC should include a statement that contains a streamlined process to change the LDC.

The Chamber of Commerce also stressed that specific comments from builders and developers be viewed as comment from the Chamber as well. The comments from the builder/developers are much more specific and contain 18 comments in total, 13 comments relate to commercial regulations, and five comments relate to residential regulations.

The letter from the Chamber starts on page 37 of the packet.

Our new legislators, Representative Kelby Woodard, District 25B, and Senator Al DeKruif, District 25, spoke at the NDDC / Chamber forum at Community Resource Bank yesterday morning.

Here’s the audio:

Click play to listen. 1 hour, 25 minutes. Or download the MP3.

Campaign websites: Al DeKruif; Kelby Woodard.

Nfld News: Woodard, DeKruif at Northfield area business forum.

I do wonder, though, whether the delinquent payments are related to the angry reaction from local hoteliers to the City’s hiring a Hampton Inn-connected consulting firm for $9,600 which ended up saying that a Hampton Inn and conference center was warranted for Northfield. See my Jan. 2010 blog post and the attached 47 comments: On deciding to spend $9,600 for hotel market study.

Additional background:

Nfld News Dec 23: CVB request fulfilled — sort of

On the advice of city attorney Chris Hood, the city initially declined to release the data, saying it was private and couldn’t legally be distributed. But by the second council discussion, city officials realized that some of what the CVB had asked for could be made public. That information, which includes the total delinquencies of more than $11,000, is enough to help the CVB move forward, said Feldbrugge.

Nfld News letter to the editor Dec 10: Northfield hoteliers must support CVB

Nfld News editorial Dec 7: Info withholding hurts CVB, city

Nfld News Dec 3: Without city data, visitors bureau says its hands are tied

They’re selling these ‘buy more’ cards and putting up similar posters in store windows around town.

Roscoe Curry, VP of Public Relations for the Northfield Area Chamber of Commerce, had some reservations about the initiative when it was first discussed at a staff meeting with Executive Director Katarina Fellbore. "I thought some of the merchants might think it a little too doomsdayish," said Curry.  He did an informal straw poll, going door-to-door with the merchants along Hwy 3, and all were in favor.

"I like that it’s direct," said Hugh G. Wreckshun, proprietor of Northfield Kwik Kondom (‘Kows, Kolleges, Kondoms, Kontentment’) near the intersection of Hwy 3 and Heritage Drive. "No sense pussyfooting around."

On a whim, I stopped by the new (it opened in the spring) Small Engine Unlimited shop at 1203 S. Hwy 3 adjacent to Northfield Lampert’s.  Owner and longtime Northfielder Dan Lien promptly dug up a spare cap and gave it to me for free.

Dan will soon have a website (naturally, I nagged him to get a blog) but in the meantime you can reach him via email smallengineunlimited@gmail.com or 507-645-5300. His business card includes this info:

• Small Engine Repair: All Makes & Models
• Small Hand Tool Repair: Rechargeable, Electric, and Pneumatic
• Sharpening Service
• Scooter & Moped Repair and Much More

The Northfield Area Chamber of Commerce Ambassadors paid him a visit in July. Here’s a photo from their Flickr Ambassador Visits photo set:

Should the Northfield Area Chamber of Commerce’s Crazy Daze (PDF of today’s schedule of events) be two-days long in case of inclement weather, like the 2010 Taste of Northfield?

Oil Can Henry’s at Hwy 3 and Honey Locust Drive has become a Castrol Premium Lube Express.

OCH International is the parent company of Oil Can Henry’s and has some kind of an alliance with Castrol, as the Castrol logo is visible at the bottom of their website.

The franchise is owned by Jeff Hasse, also the proprietor of the CountryInn Northfield and AmericaInn Northfield. Jeff is also on the boards of the NDDC and the Northfield Area Chamber of Commerce.

Two weeks ago, Faribault’s McQuay plant was cited in the Strib for “using $1.3 million in new federal tax credits to revamp a manufacturing plant to make more energy efficient air-conditioners.”

In January, Northfield’s Cardinal Glass was cited in the Strib for receiving “$7.7 million of new federal funds to convert its residential-glass factory into a solar glass-coating plant.” (A tip of the blogger hat to Larry DeBoer for alerting me to it.)

I don’t know to what extent the people involved with Northfield’s economic development ecosystem (see organizations below) are pursuing green collar manufacturing jobs. I found a few mentions:

The June 2008 Northfield MN Energy Task Force Report included this recommendation (p. 4):

Develop local policies and initiatives that help create demand for green collar occupations through public sector investments and incentives and requirements that drive private sector investments.

The packet for the Tuesday April 21, 2009 Environmental Quality Commission Meeting had an item titled “Green” Jobs Discussion:

Peter Schmelzer reported. How to entice “green” businesses and businesses committed to “green” business practices to the newly annexed property in Northfield. There is a subcommittee being formed from EDA members, Suzie Nakasian will provide contact information to Schmelzer.

Reginaldo Haslett-Marroquin (Regi!), director of the Rural Enterprise Center, published a blog post in Oct, 2007 titled Northfield’s Latino/a Economic Development and Thinking Green

For my work in Latino communities, the vision of "green industries" has a specific appeal and carries a powerful argument with tools to create hope and invigorate local leaders to take action and become more active in exploring and launching green businesses.

The June 8, 2007 edition of the Minneapolis / St. Paul Business Journal featured an article titled Northfield striving to become tech town. I cited the article a month later in a blog post titled  Northfield becoming Silicon Valley and North Beach; but what about green collar manufacturing? in which I pointed to Tom Friedman’s (NY Times columnist) April 2007 article, The Power of Green, and his YouTube video, Green is the New Red, White, and Blue.

Northfield has an economic development ecosystem that includes the Economic Development Authority (EDA) , the Northfield Enterprise Center, the City of Northfield Economic Development Dept, the Northfield Enterprise Center, the Rural Enterprise Center, the Northfield Area Chamber of Commerce, the Northfield Downtown Development Corp (NDDC) , and venture capital folks like 3C Capital Partners and Granite Equity Partners. (Did I miss anyone?)

But I can’t seem to find it on the Northfield Area Chamber of Commerce site nor on their Convention and Visitors Bureau’s Visiting Northfield web site. It’s not linked to or mentioned on the City of Northfield’s visitor page and I couldn’t find it on the Northfield.org or NDDC blogs either.

I know, I know, the print version is the main thing and it’s distributed about town. But why not make it easy for Northfielders to email it, blog it, tweet it, and post to their Facebook Walls about it so that their non-Northfield friends and colleagues take a look at it?  It costs virtually zero to do this. Plus, the thing is full of great photos, BTW. Heh.

So allow me to do my part. Here’s the PDF version, courtesy of LoGroNo. Here’s the Flash version, courtesy of Hayes Scriven and the NHS. Go forth and multiply it, by which I do NOT mean what Brits mean when they say go forth and multiply.

A search of the phrase “Highland Group” on the City’s website only comes up with the disbursements to the company in October and in December. I can’t find anything that indicates there’s been Council discussion of this. I checked with Jim Gleason, new president of the Northfield Area Chamber of Commerce/Convention and Visitors Bureau, who indicated that he wasn’t aware of the market study being done.

I’m not ready to argue that conducting a study is a bad idea. I’m questioning the process.  It seems like the Council should be involved in a public discussion about an expenditure like this, especially one that’s likely to ruffle the feathers of local business owners. According to the Nfld News, City Administrator Joel Walinski said study was done to facilitate the conversation among local developers and hotel owners. Seems backwards to me.

On Tuesday, the first issue of Localmotive, the Northfield Area Chamber of Commerce’s new e-newsletter, arrived. Sign up for it here.

"Localmotive" is a new vehicle to further connect citizens with the Northfield area. Steam-driven by Chamber businesses, it’s one of the ways we are building momentum for the new Be Local … Buy Local community-wide campaign.

I’ve taken quite a few photos of the event since 2002. (Alas, I missed ‘07). See the albums for 2002, 03, 04, 05, 06 and 08. See the large slideshow for 2008 or this small slideshow:

Small web graphic; for home pages and blog sidebar placement. (150 x 44)

Medium web graphic; for blog post titles and online magazine columns (200 x 30)

Towards the bottom of the page, there’s a Local Media Coverage section in which they also link to BLBL-related posts on the NDDC and Northfield.org blogs. And they even list LoGroNo as a local resource. 

I don’t know Amy Acheson at Acheson Creative who, according this blog post by Ross, was hired for this campaign. But kudos to her, the Chamber and the NDDC.

I captured the audio and took two dozen photos. (continued)

Click play to listen. 1 hour, 21 minutes.

Or download this MP3 for listening on your computer or portable audio device.

See the album of photos (includes most of the people who stood up to speak), the large slideshow, or this small slideshow:

This would allow lots of local web sites and blogs to embed the TourBook sidebar or even their choice of the videos, thereby taking advantage of the viral nature of the internet to, um, promote Northfield.

And the whole set of videos should be placed on the Chamber/CVB Visiting Northfield website, not just the City’s web site home page.

And it would seem that the businesses who paid to have videos produced and placed around the perimeter of the six videos would also want to have those videos embedded on their websites.

Joel wrote:

The CGI contract offers free video work for the city with their revenue being derived from advertising that appears around the video clip, the advertisements being local businesses; the businesses working directly with CGI for the development of those advertisements. There are six short City video clips focusing on the various characteristics that give Northfield its quality of life: the colleges, businesses, city celebrations, environment, and residential living.

I blogged my critique of that site (in my comments attached to the post) in February. Much of that critique (positive and negative) would apply to this site as well.

But in what I have to assume was a strategically creative move, they turned up their collective noses at those old fashioned marketing tools like blogs and Twitter and instead, they’ve found a guy to prance about like Elvis on the sidewalk in front of the Grand. Brilliant!

If you want info on the event, best to check with one of Northfield’s primo bloggers.