Best small town economic development idea I’ve seen in months, hands down.
Downtown Webster City, Iowa. Photo by Deb Brown, used by permission.
My friend Deb Brown is the new director of the Webster City, Iowa, Chamber of Commerce. Deb looked at the empty store fronts downtown and other available buildings around town as opportunities. So she and her new team in Webster City decided to show them off. Here’s her first post announcing the Tour of Empty Buildings.
- She started by gathering intelligence on the open buildings from the county.
- From that she was able to contact building owners.
- She arranged to have a construction professional and the city manager walk through the buildings with her.
- She worked with local real estate agents to work with owners as point people on the tour, fielding questions about what businesses could be a good fit, square footage, cost, condition and so on.
- She asked her Chamber Champions (the chamber volunteers, mostly retired folks) to attend and share more community history and background about the buildings.
- She got two business teachers to share the tour in their classes.
- She got the city, county and chamber all on board.
She ended up with 11 locations on the tour that were for sale or for rent. All the locations are listed in Why Bring Attention to Empty Buildings?
Why tour empty buildings?
Because people are curious, Deb said. I can attest to this. I borrowed an empty building in Alva to do wine tastings during our big arts festival. I cannot tell you how many people walked into the wine tasting just to look around at the building. (It was the Hotel Bell, if you’re curious, too.)
Deb explained:
“We’d like all the people that can come, to attend and see what spaces are available and then to go home and talk about it. Share what they saw with their friends, their church community, and their businesses.
“Because somewhere in this town and county is a person who is looking to locate in one of those buildings.
“Somewhere there is a kid just out of college who wants to move home and live and work here.
“Somewhere there is a person with a desire to be an entrepreneur.”
Results: Did it work?
1. All the participating buildings were cleaned up to be presented.
If you are from a small town, you know that this is a big deal.
2. People all over town and the surrounding area are talking about what could be possible.
That’s an important shift. Webster City has a population of about 8,000. It had been home to an Electrolux manufacturing plant employing 850 workers. In 2009 the city was notified it would be closed. In March 2011, it was closed for good. The loss of such a high percentage of jobs has been tough. But it was also more than two years ago. This tour represents a shift the town is making from “what used to be” thinking to “what could be” thinking.
3. Real estate transactions are now in progress.
At least one building is in the process of negotiations for a sale. Another buyer is seriously interested in other properties. One young attorney who lives in town, but works out of town is considering bringing her practice home.
4. By promoting the available buildings, Webster City is showing a welcome sign to entrepreneurs and businesses.
“There are several people in our community that are graduating from Iowa Central with entrepreneurial degrees,” Deb said. “They will want to stay at home and work in their home town. We’ve let them know that they have place here.”
You can read the full results, including names of those who helped make it possible, here: The Tour–Declared a Success.
Here’s Deb’s Tour of Empty Buildings update slides from 2017 (PDF), listing all the buildings that were filled.
TEDxBrookings invited Deb to share her Tour of Empty Buildings story:
Deb and I have put together a Toolkit to help you run your own Tour. You can get the details at the Tour of Empty Buildings Toolkit.
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Becky started Small Biz Survival in 2006 to share rural business and community building stories and ideas with other small town business people. She and her husband have a small cattle ranch and are lifelong entrepreneurs. Becky is an international speaker on small business and rural topics.
Great idea! We had a dilapidated downtown known as Old Town Cottonwood (Arizona) a few years back. When the recession hit we jumped into gear and addressed the blight head-on. Since that tough time, we re-energized Old Town. We recently received the Governor’s Statewide economic development award and the Governor’s Statewide tourism award for creative marketing. To top it off we (Verde Valley Arizona) were acknowledged by Lonely Planet as one of the Top 10 U.S. travel destinations for 2013. It certainly helps to be located in one of the most beautiful parts of our great country. We have an emerging wine industry that has spurred activity. We (Cottonwood, Arizona) are proof that a community can turn itself around even when times are tough. Come and visit our thriving community and see first hand.
Congratulations, Casey! That’s a great inspiration to others who are just starting their own revitalization projects.
Great idea! Our EDC is working on developing a walking tour of our empty downtown buildings because of this article. We’re going to include some our updated buildings to highlight how beautiful these old buildings can be when they are embraced by visionary owners. I like the idea of letting folks post notes expressing their thoughts on potential occupants.
Arthur, that is great! Love to see a good idea spread.
Deb Brown sent me this update:
“We’re stepping up our game now. We are in discussion with Iowa State University Design professors to have their classes come work with us to take pics of the empty story fronts and make designs of what it could look like. We will then have a wine/cheese gallery opening in a local bank and then keep the pics there for 1 month so the town can come in and check it out too! We should know by August if it’s a go — but if not, we will work with the high school teachers and do the same thing.”
Kathleen asked by email:
I am working to set up a tour in our small Ohio Village. http://www.fairportharbor.org. Interested in learning more about how the discussions with realtors were captured and followed up on. How long was the tour? Thinking of 2 hours. Thanks for this great idea!
Deb sent this reply:
Kathleen –
We scheduled a self guided tour from 5 to 7 pm with a meeting at the local HyVee after the tour for coffee and cookies. My local realtors are Chamber members so I simply picked up the phone and followed up with them.
We put up posters around town, had the local paper cover a story or two on it, advertised on the radio and in the paper – and of course all over social media.
The owner and/or realtor were in each building to answer the ‘detail’ questions. We had Chamber Champions (volunteers) in each building to tell the stories of what used to be there – to share in the glory days and paint the picture of what might be possible.
We’ve gotten national press because of this tour – and that is bringing people to our site, to our town and asking questions.
Hope that helped.
Deb Brown
What a fantastic idea, you guys on the other side of the world are unreal. As part of our tour operation we do a two hour ‘Check out Charleville’ tour, I will be adding in some empty buildings. This is going to be an excellent add on. Did you know we had 3,500 US service men at our town in the second world war. There was a top secret piece of equipment housed and used for training. Apparently of the 3,500 service men only 11 knew what was housed in the Vault. Love this place.
Cheers from Charleville Australia.
Graham, that is a great story! Thanks for sharing.