Northfield Downtown Development Corporation

In yesterday’s StarTribune (4/6/08), there was an interesting opinion piece. “Have dollars-will spend locally”, by Christy DeSmith, discussed her plans for spending her stimulus check.

Christy is a freelance writer and, from her description, it sounds like she’s generally pretty careful with her money. It’s also clear that she’s quite thoughtful about how she spends her limited resources.

She’s going to spend her anticipated money in an effort to maximize the local stimulus. Specifically, she is going to try to direct as much of that stimulus check as possible to the state’s economy “by shopping local, family-owned businesses for Minnesota-made goods”.

Christy is one of those creative professionals, she earns her bread by writing, and it appears that she hangs out with other creative types. Her “local-only bender” begins with an “extravagant dinner” at a local restaurant and then she heads to a play performed by local actors and, “most important, written by one of the Twin Cities wealth of fine playwrights”. Finally, she ends up at one of the locally-owned boutiques that carries Minnesota-designed products.

I think she’s on to something. If we follow her advice and spend our stimulus checks locally, it might really have a meaningful positive impact. We can dine at one of our locally-owned restaurants, swing into a shop that carries Minnesota-made products (pictured is the Arts Guild’s Felicia Peters gesturing to her shop’s wide-range of local artists’ offerings), and then check out some of the hometown talent on one of the many local stages. It would be a hot time for you and a heat-up for the local economy.

I really enjoyed her closing lines: “For the first time in a long while, I’ll shop without guilt. Buyer’s remorse? Try hometown pride.”

Yeah, let’s try some hometown pride.

“Miami still has some catching up to do”, so claimed the headline of Ronald Bosrock’s “Global Executive” column in Monday’s (February 25th) Strib article. In the competition for global talent, he argued that the Twin Cities was way ahead of Miami.

While recognizing that Miami has attracted multi-national companies and the largest concentration of banks south of New York City, largely due to its location in relation to Latin America, Bosrock said that the city’s current investments reveal that it is trying to catch up with the Twin Cities in at least one area. Miami has not been as successful at “attracting the highly educated, highly trained, and highly paid workers” needed to work for the multi-nationals. Miami’s current capital investment program is focused on positioning the city as a “center of culture and a place that offers a quality of lifestyle”.

Miami has recently built a new symphony hall, a new opera house, and a new museum of modern art. However, it’s not just buildings that create culture, it’s programming to fill those buildings. Miami has had to borrow artists from Cleveland.

The Twin Cities, on the other hand, has launched a public relations campaign called “More to Life”. The goal is to let the world know that the Minneapolis and St. Paul already are a center of culture and a place offering a high quality of life, featuring such offering as the Minnesota Orchestra, the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, the Minnesota Opera, the Guthrie Theater, the Ordway Center, the Walker Museum, the Science Museum, the History Center, and the Minneapolis Institute of Art.

Bosrock concludes that in the increasing global competition for talent, you have to recognize your assets and promote them vigorously. Perhaps there are some lessons for Northfield in this story.

The Executive Directors of the Northfield Area Chamber of Commerce, the Northfield Economic Development Authority, and the Northfield Enterprise Center engaged the community in a discussion about economic development at today’s Downtown Forum. Kathy Feldbrugge, Charlene Coulombe-Fiore, and Blake Abdella shared information with and took questions from the roomful of attendees.

Kathy started out with a presentation on the Chamber. The group conducts a number of activities for local businesses, including Business Retention and Expansion visits, an on-line listing of available commercial properties, and local retail promotions, and initiatives outside of Northfield, through the Conventions and Visitors Bureau, to promote tourism. Finally, the Chamber advocates on issues important to its members. Kathy stressed that the Chamber seeks to work with other organizations, both private and public.

Charlene picked up on this collaborative effort in her opening remarks, saying that it takes a team effort to succeed at economic development. The EDA is the economic development arm of the City of Northfield and is currently working to increase the tax base and number of jobs through a variety of initiatives and programs. One of their key initiatives this year is assuring an adequate supply of land through greenfield and in-fill development and redevelopment of existing sites. Their programs include the Master Development Fund, serving both major retail districts, the Downtown Revolving Loan Fund, the Shearer Grant Fund, for expanding businesses, and, coming soon, a Toolbox Fund with great flexibility to serve a range of business needs.

Blake said that the NEC focuses on both start-up and existing businesses within or relocating to Northfield. Specifically, they can help with business plans, financing options, and connecting to resources. They also have access to additional expertise through the College Board of Business Consultants and the Experienced Business Advisors Network. Blake said that this year they are going to return to conducting seminars to reach larger audiences on common issues and look forward to working with the Economic Development Partners on some of the offerings.

There were many questions from the audience, including “How can the City Council support your efforts in economic development?” The answer was unanimous, “Make economic development a priority”.

Northfield’s Convention and Visitors Bureau invited stakeholders to share input with them as they finalize plans for 2008.

A group of a dozen or so folks, including representatives from the Historical Society, the Arts Commission, the Defeat Committee, both colleges and a number of local businesses, gathered at the Northfield Golf Club this morning to discuss local tourism initiatives.

Questions asked included: Where are the visitors coming from? What brings them to Northfield? and What community tourism marketing ideas would you like to share with the CVB Advisory Board?

The discussion touched upon the powerful draw exerted by the colleges, culture, and athletic events, the economic potential of a hockey rink and performing arts center, and the opportunities/challenges of January, February and March.

Local businessperson Norman Butler summarized it well by saying, “We’re talking about the same things, we’re going in the same direction, let’s see if we can get something done”.

Over forty people, most of them Northfield retailers, showed up at the Grand Event Center early this morning to discuss the Retail Support Strategies Task Force’s report. For those who haven’t been following the work of this group, the Task Force was established in early 2007 to tackle one of the goals of the Northfield Economic Development Authority’s master plan for economic development in the city, “Develop a coordinated retail strategy.” Representing both retail districts, Downtown and “Uptown” (the district flanking south Highway 3), this morning’s gathering considered and discussed the Task Force’s findings and recommendations.

The stated outcome for the today’s meeting was to identify five to seven strategies to pursue immediately (given appropriate resources of time and dollars), with the longer-term goal of implementing some of the almost three dozen Task Force recommendations over the next three to eighteen months. Based on the notes taken by NDDC Board Members, we’ve still got at least a dozen strategies that the group suggested merit further consideration.

Some of the topics discussed at length today were the need for an increasingly sophisticated events calendar that pulls info from a wider range of event sponsors and pushes selective info out to specific segments of the business community, the recognition that retailers need to shape their product mix and marketing appeal to meet both local residents and visitors to build the broadest base of customers, and the belief that public investment should be strategically targeted on projects that will provide the financial leverage to produce significant economic benefits for Northfield.

Next steps includes sending these higher visibility action steps out to the attendees of this morning’s meeting and ask them for further prioritization, as well as soliciting additional ideas that may have percolated since this morning’s cup of coffee. Once we identify these priorities, and have a more focused action plan, we’ll work with our economic development partners, as well as Northfield’s retail community, to steadily implement the ideas.