What Cities Gain When They Embrace the Artisans
The multi-year process of rewriting the city’s development code caused a significant amount of sturm und drang, especially among the downtown folks, but here on Business Loop, we saw some new avenues open up. Under the new codes, activities on mixed-use corridors such as ours have been expanded to include uses previously prohibited but now recognized as […]
Read MoreAre national chains still the key to success?
Like many who work in downtown economic development, people often approach me asking, “Why don’t we get a Gap? (or Banana Republic, Ann Taylor, Loft, or H & M.)” It’s a legitimate question. These stores are usually found down the road at the mall and the demographic of the customers often fits well with a particular downtown. […]
Read MoreCity Mouse and Country Mouse
In Caught in the Middle, Richard C. Longworth paints a grim picture of the future of the Midwest, what with declining populations, ever-shrinking job markets, and small towns dying on the vine. As Longworth puts it: The rural Midwest, in truth, existed for one era, and that era has passed. It responded to the economic […]
Read MoreThe Changing Face of Historic Renovation
When I first started as director of a downtown organization in the early aughts, my predecessor gave me one piece of advice: stay away from historic preservation. Apparently, she had once tried to establish a historic district and had been shot down by the board fairly handily. It only took 2 years for everything to change. In the […]
Read MoreChanging the Rules
When I first starting working for our Downtown CID (at the time, more a merchant’s association), the general consensus was that we needed to go head-to-head with the mall. Although it was 2000, people still remembered when the opening of Parkade Plaza in the 1960’s decimated downtown retail. In the first year of Parkade opening, […]
Read MoreEconomic Vitality in One Photo
A photo posted by Carrie Gartner (@carriegartner) on Jan 18, 2015 at 7:58am PST Harold’s Doughnuts, the locally-owned craft doughnut shop, sells out by 8 am for the third day running. They’ve been open for 3 days.
Read MoreThe Changing Face of Manufacturing
Much of the economic development discussion lately has revolved around large-scale manufacturing and how we can attract the few remaining American manufacturers to our region. In the process, we tend to dismiss home-grown manufacturing as small bore operations, better suited to the DIY hipsters on Etsy. Makers and artists though are not just a quaint homage an earlier era […]
Read More2014 Best Performing Cities
The Milken Institute just released their report on the Best Performing Cities of 2014. Their report focused on outputs such as jobs, wages, salaries, and technology rather than factors such as quality of life or cost of living. Columbia was named #11 out of 179 small cities. Not a bad ranking by any stretch of […]
Read MoreEconomic Development and National Parks
NPR had a fascinating story that really highlights what “economic development” has come to mean. Roxanne Quimby, founder of Burt’s Bees, had been slowly buying up property around Millinocket, Maine that has been abandoned by paper mills. Her ultimate goal was to donate 100,000 acres and an endowment to the National Park Service for the creation of […]
Read MoreThere’s no there there.
Our trip to Vancouver, Washington proved to be nothing short of perplexing. As always, we stayed in a downtown hotel and arrived early to enjoy the city. It’s a little larger than Columbia and the central city is fairly comparable–some building density in the downtown area surrounded by older but well-tended neighborhoods. There were also […]
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