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With the
completion of a thought that began to seed several years
ago, Jack Schultz, CEO of Agracel, Inc., a Effingham,
IL-based industrial development company, has been touring
the country discussing the success of small towns as
outlined in his book Boomtown USA, the 7 ½ Keys to Big
Success in Small Towns. For the book, published in
conjunction with the National Association of Industrial
and Office Properties, Schultz and his team examined small
stand-alone towns--excluding any within MSAs--and using
criteria based on local demographics, quality-of-life
factors and a support system for businesses, whittled
15,800 small towns down to 1,200. After examining the
communities more closely, the team chose the top 397
successful small towns discussed in the book. So what
makes small towns like Columbus, IN; Cape Gerardo, MO;
Paragould, AR; and Rocky Mountain, VA so successful?
Schultz tells GlobeSt.com the answer lies not only in the
quality of life in those communities but the residents
themselves.
GlobeSt.com:
What small towns
are booming?
Schultz:
They’re communities
that have figured out what it takes to be a successful
community, have some good quality of life attributes about
them and really set themselves up as a place where people
might want to live because of those quality of life
issues.
GlobeSt.com:
Have small towns
been booming over a long period of time or is this a
relatively new phenomenon?
Schultz:
We see it as a trend
that's in the early stages. We did most of our work based
on the census from 1990-2000; after the top small towns
were chosen we looked at job growth from January 2001 to
January 2004 and saw that the US economy added 743,000
jobs and, of those jobs, 279,000 were added in the 397
communities that we chose. That’s one out of three jobs
that were added in the last three years.
GlobeSt.com:
Do you think that
will surprise a lot of people?
Schultz:
People are taking a
broad brush and saying rural America is an area that is
losing population. And a lot of the small towns are. I’m
not painting with a broad brush that all of rural America
is successful or will continue to be successful, but
people are going to chose where they want to live based on
quality-of-life issues and, because of technology, the
work will follow them and oftentimes that is in smaller
communities.
GlobeSt.com:
What types of
businesses are moving to these towns?
Schultz:
The companies that are
looking at these areas are some of the industrial
companies, some of the high-tech companies, the call
centers. For example, Dell Computers just opened an
800-person call center in Twin Falls, ID. The retail is
going to follow population growth. We’ve seen that
happen in some of the areas that have become regional
hubs. Wal-Mart, Home Depot, Staples and the other big
boxes are going to places like the Cape Gerardos of the
world because people are moving there.
GlobeSt.com:
Are there any fears
that a big-box store is going to come into town and put
the local mom and pops out of business?
Schultz:
In the really
successful communities it's a non-issue. They welcome
everybody and recognize that the mom-and-pop businesses,
to succeed, have to figure out a way to compete with the
Wal-Mart's or the Home Depots; that they are going to have
to offer different services and do things that a Wal-Mart
or Home Depot can’t do. The communities that do the best
are the ones where Wal-Mart is moving into; the
communities that are generally doing the worst are the
ones next door. All the shoppers go to that town with the
Wal-Mart so the downtown of the community that decided to
ban it is often the one which ends up suffering the worst
It's a long-term strategic error on their part. That
economic model of hunkering down is long-term economic
disaster for a community. The community that is trying to
take chances and move to a higher level doesn’t always
succeed but at least you have a chance.
GlobeSt.com:
But communities
need more than big-box retailers, right?
Schultz:
Those centers that
have a diversified base probably have more positive
attributes as opposed to communities that have one strong
engine that's leading it. If that engine dies, it can be
catastrophic. It’s possible but it’s a difficult
process to go back. I was just in Rochester, NY which was
the headquarters of Eastman-Kodak, Bausch & Lomb and
Xerox 20 to 30 years ago. Unfortunately, as we saw with
all of their businesses, what could be a wonderful
business and industry today, 30 years from now might not
be as attractive. There were over 60,000 employees of
Kodak and that has shrunk to less than 20,000. That's a
gut-wrenching thing to go through.
GlobeSt.com:
But can they
recover?
Schultz:
A lot of those don’t
ever recover but occasionally you have a community that
goes on to do wonderful things. Leavenworth, WA was a saw
milling and railroad town of 5,000. The saw mill closed
down, the railroad pulled up the tracks and Leavenworth
fell to 1,000 people. It looked like it was headed to
becoming a ghost town. Fortunately, 11 women literally
drew a line in the sand. They brought in a consultant,
held a series of town meetings and, after a lot of
discussion, decided to reinvent themselves as a Bavarian
Village, even though there were no Bavarians living in
town. Today, Leavenworth has doubled its population to
2,000 and has 500 members in the Chamber of Commerce. The
community brings in 3.5 million tourists a year. The
Audubon Society has built a bird sanctuary right outside
of town because of all the people coming to visit. Twenty
apple orchards have been converted into boutique wineries.
They have been so successful in their transformation that
40 families from Bavaria moved to Leavenworth.
GlobeSt.com:
Is small-town
success always such a grass roots movement?
Schultz:
It has to come from
within and people have to want to do it. Often, one person
with passion in a community is better than 50 people who
are just kind of interested. It's that one or two people
with passion that can transform a community and create
opportunities.
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