Northfield Downtown Development Corporation

Poetry reading,

Friday, June 1st, 7:30 pm

at Tiny’s Dogs All Day, 321 Division Street…

…in Downtown Northfield.

For more information, see the Arts Guild website.

I’m roughly paraphrasing Mary Rossing, owner of Present Perfect and the NDDC’s newest Board Member, at yesterday’s meeting.

Jane McWilliams, Bardwell Smith, Sue Lloyd, Sam Demas, Phillip Spensley and Dixon Bond came to our board meeting. They are the Arts, Recreation and Culture Committee (or “ARC” committee).

About four years ago, the NDDC did a long-range planning process facilitated by Charley Skinner. Out of the work came three committees: The Action Squad, the E. R. Team, and the ARC Committee. Among other things, the ARC Committee has worked to gain recognition for Northfield as an “Art Town”, supported the Art Crawls, gave birth to ArtSwirl, and monitored the Old Middle School Reuse activities. There has always been at least one member of the NDDC Board on these committees.

Then in December of ’05, the last NDDC board member “retired” from the ARC Committee.

But the group kept meeting. They were the driving force behind the ArtsPlan06 effort, key advocates for the new Arts Commission, and have started working closely with the CVB to promote our assets as an Art Town.

The six committee members showed up at the board meeting to ask if they should continue to be a working NDDC committee.

As the group was filing out of the conference room after their presentation, Mary turned to the rest of the board and said, “Let’s see, we have a group of people offering to work with us on achieving our goals…the answer would be “Yes, and Thank You”.

Between the HRA’s staff report and various newspaper articles, I’m fielding many questions like that in the title of this blog. In spite of my best efforts, there are a few people out there that think that the NDDC is going to discriminate against anyone who doesn’t call themselves an artist.

First, no one associated with the NDDC has ever called it the “Artist Building”. Although it is also true that no one at the NDDC is particularly wild about the name “Building for Creative Professionals”, the working title was selected to clearly identify the target of the marketing efforts.

The phrase is based on ideas in Richard Florida’s book “The Rise of the Creative Class” that was discussed at an NDDC Forum in March of 2005. The jobs in this group start with artists, designers, and media workers. From the very beginning, I added architects, chemists (due to my close working relationship with the great, late Don Tarr), and computer programmers. Since then, I’ve heard that most people also include educators, health professionals, and even lawyers.

I’m sorry, but I’m drawing the line at lawyers, unless or until my board of directors overrules me.

Back in the ’80s, when I was earning my MBA at the College of St. Thomas, we referred to these people as “Knowledge Workers”. They all made their livings by coming up with creative new ways to approach the same old problems. In fact, I remember reading “The Knowledge Executive”, a book by Harlan Cleveland, Dean of the Hubert Humphrey Institute, that suggested that it was going to take a new type of manager to provide leadership to this new type of worker.

Depending on the source, and the professions included, it’s usually considered to make up between 25 and 50 percent of the U. S. workforce. I would venture to say that in Northfield it’s probably close to two-thirds of the workforce. In fact, if you are a proponent of Asset Based Community (or Economic) Development, you probably would be advocating for efforts that would attract more of these types of jobs and these types of workers to our town.

However, none of this matters for the Building for Creative Professionals, because our marketing efforts are going to include not only vocational creatives but those that practice avocational creativity.

So, if you’re one of the 67% of Northfield’s workforce that is creative in your professional life or if you find that you explore your creativity in your private time, and you’re looking for rental housing in an authentic downtown, within a community that values art and culture, we hope that you’ll consider the Building for Creative Professionals. We think that our efforts will bring a positive contribution to Northfield.

Jerry Bilek, owner of Monkey See, Monkey Read, sent me a link to a story of interest. A recent study of business impacts on the economy in San Francisco found that local businesses contributed over four times as much as chain and the internet businesses.

The study also found that if consumers shifted just 10% of their purchases to local businesses, the economic gains in taxes and jobs would be dramatic. Although the story focused on independent book retailers, the study found similar projected impacts in the toy, sporting goods and dining areas.

My favorite quote was from Pete Mulvihill, one of the owners of Green Apple Books. “Where you spend your money really determines what your neighborhood is going to look like in 10 years.”

I was running an errand at Carleton College when I was stopped by Rec Center Manager Terry Rivers and his wife Beth, well-known bike commuters. They asked me why there aren’t more bike racks in downtown Northfield.

In fact, we’ve been working on that issue for quite a while. However, I can see their point. A quick survey of the bike racks in downtown reveals that they tend to be heavily used and merchants have told me that they could use more.

The Mayor’s Task Force on Streetscape is meeting this week. Joe, Keith…you guys on it?