Northfield Downtown Development Corporation

In its March meeting the NDDC board set the stage for its 2007 Partnership Campaign and reviewed NDDC activities over the past month.Joe Grundhoefer, NDDC vice president and owner of J. Grundy’s Reub’n'stein, has agreed to chair the 2007 Partnership Campaign. Board members Robert Bierman, of Bierman’s Home Furnishings, and Renee Huckle, of Northfield News and Cannon Valley Printing, agreed to join Joe on the campaign committee. The committee will lead the board in carrying out the campaign during May and June. The NDDC’s financial support comes in roughly equal proportions from this annual campaign and from economic development activities to strengthen downtown that are funded by the Northfield Economic Development Authority (EDA).

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…and already City of Northfield workers are getting ready for Spring and Summer, known to some as the Season of Visitors.

A crew was raking up debris and spreading soil and seed in Bridge Square this morning. As I walked to our historic post office, I thought that it really looked great. We wish to thank them for their timely efforts.

The NDDC, responding to input from our stakeholders, has been working with City Staff for several years now on the schedule of the “downtown clean-up”. It seemed to some people that this important annual event occurred just before the Defeat of Jesse James Days. As NDDC Vice President Joe Grundhoefer stated, “Our tourism season starts by May 1st.”

In the past couple of years, we’ve found City Staff to be very responsive to our ideas and very supportive of our efforts. In our recent meeting with Director of Public Services Joel Walinski, we all agreed that Downtown should be ready to welcome our first major event for visitors, St. Olaf’s Commencement on May 27th.

So they were down there this morning, doing their best to assure that the grass is green in Downtown for all those happy Oles. Thanks again Joel; working together, we will accomplish great things.

It’s time to head back to Minnesota. I’ve enjoyed my stay in Seattle and learned a few things too.

I think that I’ve further developed my sustainable design knowledge base for the Building for Creative Professionals, refined my perspective on community planning issues, particularly as it relates to the environment, and even picked up a few ideas for the Retail Support Strategies Task Force.

Yes, I’ve enjoyed my stay in Seattle but I’ll be glad to get back to Northfield… with its Blue Monday, Bittersweet, Quality Bakery and Hideaway!

Further illustrating opening themes, many of the workshop leaders at “Building a Sustainable Future” advocated what I’ll call asset based development. Reiterating that downtown’s competitive advantage is a sense of place, they suggested strengthening that advantage by enhancing the pedestrian-friendliness of downtown districts.

Some of their recommendations were familiar, such as traffic signals, reduction of speeds (at 31 mph 37% of vehicle-pedestrian accidents are fatal, at 15 mph only 3.5% are fatal), and traffic calming. There were a few new twists, however, including rejecting the last 50 years of emphasizing vehicular transportation and remembering the 5,000 years of successful focus on pedestrians. Experience has shown that slower but distributed vehicular traffic actually produces shorter drive times and reduces vehicular casualties.

Communities on both coasts have found that green projects also enhance pedestrian friendliness. Replacing gray space with green space, moving buildings closer to the sidewalk and promoting mixed-use development have resulted in shoppers being willing to walk longer distances and to spend longer periods in shopping districts.

One presenter compared shopping by vehicle with shopping by foot. Typically, shopping by vehicle results in one planned exchange per trip. A pedestrian shopping trip results in one planned exchange and possibly a dozen unplanned exchanges, including some social exchanges that may lead to a future commercial exchange.

Seattle is using these concepts in their Comprehensive Plan, zoning ordinances, code enforcement, traffic planning, parking strategies and economic development. When Gary Nickels was elected Mayor, the city was experiencing an economic downturn. He convened an “Economic Opportunity Task Force.”

One of the first actions was to review and modify the commercial code. Both businesses and consumers wanted pedestrian-friendly districts. The City identified 37 mixed-use districts and began to waive code requirements that were recognized as undermining pedestrian-based commercial activity.

Seattle believes this approach has stimulated increased economic vitality in these districts. It also believes that as petroleum prices rise, these districts’ advantage over car dependent commercial districts will increase.

The opening session for the National Trust for Historic Preservation’s Main Street Program (Building a a Sustainable Future) set the tone. Authenticity is downtown’s strength.

Doug Loescher, Executive Director of the National Main Street Program, welcomed the 1,600 attendees to the historic 5th Avenue Theater, noting that it was the largest gathering in the organization’s 29-year history. He introduced Julie Wilkerson, the State Director of Community, Trade, & Economic Development, who said “Great downtowns don’t just happen” and recognized that it takes countless volunteer hours to achieve truly sustainable vitality.

Mayor Gary Nickels welcomed the conference to the city saying that sustainability is “not just how we power our cites but how we build them.” He looked forward to a future in which “the biggest transportation decision will be what color shoes do I want to wear when I walk to work.”

The keynote speaker, award-winning author Timothy Egan, said that in his experience, the key to sustainability is authenticity. He said that solutions will not come from the outside but that “the answers are right in front of us.” He advised that our economic development plans “must be connected to place.”

Egan pointed out the misguided plans of recent years. In his role as Economic Development Reporter for the New York Times, he studied various communities in the Great Plains. He learned that 7/8ths of the counties in Oklahoma turned fields into industrial parks in hopes of attracting the next Microsoft and they all sit empty. He found that communities that enjoyed the greatest success built on their existing, authentic assets.

He also talked about all the towns in northern Washington that focused on the tourist trade instead of building local businesses on a sustainable base. It became a question of “who’s going to be this year’s hot destination.” He noted one northern success story, Astoria, rejected the tourism trap and sported bumper stickers that said “We Ain’t Quaint.” He speculated that the source of this campaign was the Finn Clubs that hosted happy hours at 6 am.

He was optimistic about the future of sustainability, noting both hope, University of Washington students’ buttons that read “Sustainability is Sexy,” and fear, the Jesuit community that has taken a vigorous role in the issue warning “if we don’t do something, we’re all going to die.” He also saw a bright future for our widely scattered downtowns, observing decentralizing trends in energy, food and real estate.

He closed by returning to his theme. “To achieve sustainability economic vitality, identify the authentic and build on it.”