Northfield Downtown Development Corporation

Last year I was one of a group of two dozen Northfielders sent off to the frozen tundra to receive Blandin Leadership Training.

One of the things that we were taught was called Asset Based Community Development. To perhaps oversimplify, this concept involves looking at your towns existing strengths as basic building blocks and creating an economic development strategy around those assumed competitive advantages.

To apply this concept on a modest scale, one could focus on the downtown district. An informal inventory of the downtown office users indicates that we have attracted a number of what I call creative industries: arts and design, architecture and engineering, graphics and words. A stroll along Division, Water and Washington Streets reveals that our pedestrian-friendly shopping district is rich in the offerings of design and decoration: art stores, craft cottages and design studios. Even our purveyors of burgers, games and shoes have a regional reputation for the quality of craft.

Going even deeper than our collection of 19th Century commercial buildings, downtown Northfield has developed character. With the wide variety of arts-related shops and specialized craft studios, we have an increasingly distinctive business district.

This lesson on community assets informed my reading (in the January issue of the National Trust for Historic Preservation’s Main Street News) about the 16:62 Design Zone, located in a funky old neighborhood of Pittsburgh. They had some cool historic buildings in need of a little investment and a community that wanted a certain kind of economic development

The business leaders believed that this combination of assets had real potential. They decided to promote the area to a specific market niche - businesses that focused on arts and design. The business owners got together to look at branding the district through a shared vision and to promote the neighborhood’s assets to attract similar businesses and, ultimately, bring more customers to the area for everyone.
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The NDDC has posted the Public Art Walking Tour Map on its website. It joins our Downtown Directory as a resource available via the web.

The map was originally commissioned by the NDDC through long-time NDDC Community Advisor Jim Bohnhoff to support the Mill Towns’ Trail Group’s ARTrail event for the annual ArtSwirl celebration.

NDDC Community Advisor and ARC Committee Member Jane McWilliams suggested that we continue to distribute the map by including it in our Family and Parent Weekend Welcome Bags. Then we figured why not post it on our website so we can be distributing it 24/7.

It’s really great when various groups identify common goals and commit to working together. Not only do many minds come up with multiple ideas but you get a heck of alot more done.

NDDC Board Member Keith Covey takes a shift at the table for Carleton’s Family and Parent weekend. The NDDC has distibuted hundreds of Downtown Welcome Bags at both St. Olaf and Carleton Colleges over the past two weeks to support the schools’ hospitality and to let the visitors know about opportunities in Downtown Northfield.

Over two dozen volunteers supported this effort, doing things like filling the bags, delivering the bags, and greeting visitors with a gift of a bag. The response from the families and parents has made it all worthwhile. They’ve told us that the town is making them feel welcome and they feel good about having their kids attend a school here in Northfield.

How could you not feel welcomed by a guy like Keith…

It was recently announced that the Economic Development Plan Consultants are making good progress on their work in Northfield. In fact, in just three more months, or January of ‘06, their report will be released to the public.

When the firm was hired back in July, I blogged my own proposed Economic Development Plan. I thought that it was about time to recycle it. I’ve repeated it in full below:
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This column ran in the October 11 edition of the Northfield News.
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