'Radically Rural' event in Keene, N.H., Sept. 27-28 wil be all in-person, with 7 tracks including journalism, with 3 sessions

"Radically Rural," the six-year-old community-development conference co-sponsored by The Keene Sentinel, will be full in person this year, without an online component.

This year's theme is “Reimaging Rural,” which “doesn’t always mean something that’s never been done, because sometimes progress includes reaching back to what’s been done before,” Julianna Dodson, director of Radically Rural, said in the Sentinel. “It’s sort of a prompt to help us rethink in new ways.”

The summit, set for Sept. 27-28, is a series of programs co-sponsored by Keene’s Hannah Grimes Center for Entrepreneurship. The opening speaker will be Tony Pipa, a senior fellow with the Brookings Institution’s Center for Sustainable Development and leader of the nonprofit’s Reimagining Rural Policy initiative, which launched in 2020. He will discuss rural issues with people who have appeatred on his none-episode podcast. The second day will open with Chris Estes, co-executive director of the Aspen Institute’s Community Strategies Group, who will talk about “a more cohesive strategy” in community development, Dodson said.

Radically Rural has seven tracks: arts and culture, clean energy, community journalism, entrepreneurship, All in for Health, land and community, and Main Street. The journalism track will be have three sessions: “Building Sustainability,” “Generating Audience Revenue” and “How Do They Do That?: Groundbreaking Journalism,” The first session will include Taos News Publisher Chris Baker, Joey Young of Kansas Publishing Ventures and Tristan Scott, managing editor of the Flathead Beacon in Kalispell, Mont., which dropped its print edition in April.

Shay Totten, newsroom-success manager for the American Press Institute, will moderate the audience-development session, with Arik Ligeti, director of audience for Canadian environmental magazine The Narwhal, and Christiaan Mader, founder of The Current in Lafayette, La., “These are organizations that have grown their subscriber base and their donor base over time,” said Terry Williams, the Sentinel’s senior advisor for audience and community engagement and its former president and chef operating officer

The third journalism session will be “a deep dive into how … journalists have reported on powerful stories” affecting their rural communities, Williams said. They are North Carolina freelance journalist Victoria Bouloubasis; Adam Ganucheau, editor-in-chief of Mississippi Today; and Samantha Hogan, investigative reporter for The Maine Monitor.

Tickets for the event are on sale, with prices based on a sliding scale using the honor system. A limited number of free tickets are also available for low-income people interested in attending. MOre information is available at www.radicallyrural.org.

Rural challenges show repeated concerns and a glimmer of optimism by residents, a new survey indicates

Chart by The Daily Yonder from Save Your Town 2023 survey results

How do you feel about the future of your rural town? "Since 2015, two women, Becky McCray and Deb Brown, have been surveying rural communities on how they view their area's problems and future," reports Kristi Eaton of The Daily Yonder. The pair created Save Your Town, an Oklahoma-Mississippi-based effort that helps towns find affordable ways to address local problems.

Often survey results do not follow preconceived ideas, and 2023 results followed that pattern. Pollster Celinda Lake told Eaton, "Rural people were twice as likely to say they were optimistic about their community's future as were negative about their community's future. I was very happy to see how optimistic people were." Lake said she was "really pleased and surprised" to see events, education, tourism and arts and culture listed as top community assets.

The survey was taken online from Nov. 11 to Jan. 31 and got 315 responses from subscribers and visitors to SaveYour.Town and SmallBizSurvival.com, from news-media coverage and cooperating groups that publicized the survey. "Survey participation is voluntary and self-selected, not based on scientific polling methods, but the online survey does offer a range of responses from people who identify as rural," Eaton points out. "The self-selected participants were more optimistic about the economy than people who participated in the Daily Yonder’s 2022 scientific, randomized poll of rural voters. . . . nearly three-quarters of rural respondents said the economy was not working well for them. Half said they expected their financial situation would get worse in the next year."

Co-founder Becky Brown said the latest survey shows "big disconnects. . . between what rural people want and what services and assistance are commonly offered to them." She "said business owners and leaders said usable buildings are harder to find than loans, and they showed little interest in needing support with business plans or pitch competitions," Eaton reports. "This year’s survey found that in addition to housing and downtowns, other challenges were not enough volunteers, losing young people, and a lack of child care."

In 2019, Save Your Town survey respondents gave these top five concerns: Losing young people; downtown is dead; not enough good housing; need new residents; no one shops in town. In 2021, the top five were identical with the exception of "no one shops downtown" falling off the list and "not enough [residents] volunteer" being added. The latest survey mirrored much of the earlier results but added lack of child care. Although Americans have many divides, repeated concerns on rural responses highlight several issues such as not enough young people (or laborers), a lack of affordable housing and a severe lack of child care options, which are also problematic for urban and suburban areas.

Eastern Kentucky downtowns have revitalized, due in part to natives coming home to support small communities

Dusk falls in Hazard (Photo by Ryan C. Hermens, Lexington Herald-Leader)

Philanthropic and government help, and "can-do" attitudes of residents and business owners, have helped some rural Eastern Kentucky towns rebound from years of decline, reports Bill Estep of the Lexington Herald-Leader. Hazard, pop. 5,100, is one of those places. "On a short walk through downtown Hazard, you can buy a T-shirt celebrating Appalachia and a three-wick candle, browse at a book store and a record store, get a latte at a coffee shop. . . The Eastern Kentucky city has seen a resurgence of downtown retail businesses in the last four years. . . . more than 40 businesses have opened on or near Main Street. Nearly all are still afloat, outlasting the worst health pandemic in a century and devastating flooding in the region last summer."

Hazard's flourishing business community has been a long-term project that addressed population and retail losses as coal jobs declined. "Local leaders and business stakeholders set out several years ago to try to reverse that. . . . The city created an incentive program — initially with money from the Foundation for Appalachian Kentucky, then with taxpayer money — to provide grants of up to $5,000 for signs, store fixtures and other needs," Estep writes. "The city and county pooled resources to hire Bailey Richards as downtown coordinator, a position that hadn't existed before." Mandi Fugate Sheffel, who owns the Read Spotted Newt bookstore, told Estep, "I think her position is probably one of the most important parts of what's happening downtown. That was some action put into what they were trying to do."

To the south, "Pineville, Kentucky, was an early leader in using incentives to boost downtown development, including grants and a five-year moratorium on an increase in the property tax even if the value of a renovated property goes up," Estep notes. "Even though Bell County lost population between 2010 and 2020, the downtown area went from 80% vacant eight years ago to 100% occupancy by February 2020, said Jacob Roan, director of the city's Main Street program."

Up the Cumberland River in Harlan, pop. 1,220, a downtown brewery opened, "The Harlan Beer Co., a taproom and restaurant located in a renovated century-old building," Estep reports. "Valerie Long Hinkle has seen the same thing at her business, Hill & Holler, which sells T-shirts and other gifts with an Appalachian theme in Cumberland, a town of about 1,900 people in Harlan County. Hinkle studied architecture at the University of Kentucky and stayed afterward, living in Lexington for 13 years before moving home to Harlan County in 2015 to be closer to family."

Estep adds, "Hinkle said there was once an idea in Appalachia that young people had to leave to be successful, but that is changing." Hinkle told Estep, "I think people are hungry to support their local community. . . They are hungry to be able to shop in downtown. . . . I think that Appalachia is on the cusp of something big."

Revitalization plan in Danville, Va., pop. 42,000, generated skepticism, but now it's a model for other communities

Main Street in Danville (Photo by Rick Barker Properties)

The Industrial Development Authority in Danville, Virginia, "bought old, empty buildings — sometimes at above-market prices — with the goal of selling them to developers. The strategy drew some criticism over the years, but local leaders believe it’s paid off in increased tax revenues and new vitality for previously depressed areas of the city," Grace Mamon reports for Cardinal News, which reports on Southwest and Southside Virginia.

"Locals say that Craghead Street used to be like a ghost town, and now it’s home to restaurants, apartments, a brewery and a science center. The city’s downtown, called the River District, alone has seen about $300 million in public and private investment in the last decade," Mamon reports.

The IDA's approach began with buying old Dan River Mills properties "after the industry left in 2006, depressing the local economy," Mamon notes. Then it expanded the strategy to non-mill buildings, especially in blocks occupied by tobacco warehouses, another industry that declined, because many absentee owners weren't inetrested in redevelopment.

Corrie Bobe, Danville’s economic development director, recalled the skepticism: “People said, ‘Why are you spending so much money in one central area when there are other needs throughout the entire community?’” However, "Cut city officials believed that targeting the River District was a priority, predicting that a vibrant downtown would spur growth and redevelopment in other areas," Mamon reports, noting that "Ignoring downtown redevelopment had cost the city in the past."

She recalls the story of a manufacturing CEO who made an unannounced visit with his wife:  “They took one drive up Main Street and saw a bunch of boarded-up buildings, no one there, this dead downtown,” said Telly Tucker, economic-development director from 2004 to 2020. “It didn’t take long for them to say, ‘This is not the place where we want to put our business.’” She told Mamon that the loss of that opportunity was painful, but also was “a blessing to hold that mirror up.”

Local governments face budget challenges in the new year; city-dwellers moving to the country could help

States, cities and counties nationwide are facing budget challenges as the coronavirus pandemic continues to exact an economic toll. Rural areas will likely be forced to deal with the effects for years to come, but the crisis may provide an opportunity for some to address long-neglected problems.

The newly approved stimulus package "does not include a giant new slug of direct aid state and local advocates pushed for. But it will inject billions of dollars into the economy to help businesses and households, including $284 billion for a forgivable loan program to help small businesses cover payroll, a $300 increase to weekly unemployment benefits and $600 one-time payments to many Americans," Bill Lucia reports for Route Fifty. The "$900 billion relief legislation will also pour additional aid into areas linked to state and local government. For example, K-12 schools will receive $54 billion, higher education gets $22 billion, around $14 billion will be sent to struggling transit systems, and billions will be spent on various vaccine-related initiatives."

But state and local budgets will likely struggle at least until economic activity gets back to normal, which will be influenced by Covid-19 vaccination rates, Lucia reports. Areas and states that rely more on oil production and tourism are particularly hurting, as are lower-wage workers, Lucia reports.

"At the local level, it could be well into 2021 or later before the damage the virus has caused to budgets becomes clear," Lucia reports. "There are also questions about the lasting marks for some local economies—for instance, if downtown offices will lose tenants if remote work continues or if businesses like restaurants and venues, hobbled by the pandemic, will be able to rebound.

A recent report from the U.S. Department of Agriculture adds to a growing body of research showing that rural areas will be burdened by the effects of the virus — economic, medical and social — for many years to come," Adam Minter reports for Bloomberg. 

Before the pandemic, many rural areas that relied on tourism and recreation were thriving, especially those with public-private investments in existing assets like classic Main Street buildings, Minter reports. The pandemic halted much of that revitalization, but city-dwellers looking to move to the country could provide an influx of people, jobs and real-estate revenue. 

"Attracting long-term urban relocations would not only help sustain the progress made in creating vibrant rural commercial districts," Minter writes. "It could also renew pressure on Washington to address problems — such as a lack of quality health care or widespread broadband — that were plaguing rural America long before the pandemic. That could help create a virtuous circle, made all the more urgent by the pandemic."

Policy paper shows how local strategies are helping revitalize three small cities: Wheeling, Emporia and Laramie

Part of the historic district of Laramie, Wyoming (Photo via Wikimedia Commons)

A five-part policy paper aims to cut through stereotypes to show small-town America as it really is and discuss examples of local strategies for sustainable growth in three small cities (Wheeling, West Virginia; Laramie, Wyoming; and Emporia, Kansas) and surrounding rural areas. Its authors argue that this is more important than ever as such places struggle economically during the pandemic.

Pundits and policymakers (not to mention the general public) often paint rural and small-town America as a monolith of white people who depend on traditional industries and struggle with stagnation, decline and despair. "These characterizations are not just inaccurate; they actively obscure effective solutions for rural economic and community development and the local efforts underway to implement them," Hanna Love and Mike Powe write for the Brookings Institution.

Love is a senior research analyst for Brookings' Metropolitan Policy Program. Powe is the director of research at Main Street America, a nonprofit focused on revitalizing older and historic commercial districts. They write, "For decades, local leaders have been implementing locally tailored economic development strategies that value and build upon place-based assets, and have garnered real successes in fostering recreation, amenity-based, and service economies that support rural places of opportunity." Here's a brief summary of each part:

Main Streets are a key driver of equitable economic recovery: Downtown revitalization of commercial corridors outside metropolitan areas can foster economic revival for small businesses and make small cities more equitable, dynamic and resilient. Love and Powe provide a framework for evaluating revitalization efforts and applying elsewhere the lessons learned in Wheeling, Laramie, and Emporia.

Non-metro small businesses need local solutions to survive: The pandemic disproportionately hurts small businesses, especially outside metro areas, places that were still rebounding from the Great Recession. They often had less access to capital, poor broadband connectivity, and were more likely to be the most immediately vulnerable industries than their urban counterparts, Love and Powe write. This section discusses the role downtown revitalization and government support can play in helping underserved rural small businesses develop, survive and grow.

A flexible, accessible and healthy built environment; Non-metro residents face persistent barriers, such as lack of access to health care, broadband, and fresh food, and they're disproportionately likely to be struggling with poverty, debt, and isolation. "Rural small businesses face similar challenges in connectivity and capital access, and are suffering further due to their concentration in the most immediately vulnerable industries," Love and Powe write. This section explores whether downtown revitalization can promote the improvements needed for the health and resilience of a broader swath of rural residents and small businesses.

Main Streets can't achieve true economic revival without bridging social divides: Non-metro revitalization and growth increasingly rely on immigrants, but many places struggle with racism or elitism that makes them feel unwelcome. "This brief examines whether downtown revitalization can help foster cohesive social environments that nurture racial and economic inclusion, reflect community identity, and enhance residents’ attachments to place," Love and Powe write.

Creating a shared vision of rural resilience through community-led civic structures: "As governmental responses to the covid-19 pandemic remain inconsistent and marked by disparate outcomes by race and place, people and small businesses are turning to local organizations for relief—seeking support from the community and civic structures they know and trust. While much attention has been paid to community-based actors in cities, less is known about how community organizations and coalitions are stepping up in rural areas, where residents and small businesses face similar barriers in accessing relief," Love and Rowe write. "This brief examines how the place-based entities behind downtown revitalization can not only provide relief to residents and small businesses, but also how they can support the development and capacity of other community organizations, coalitions, and networks to build resilience in the years to come."

Small New England newspapers make Editor & Publisher's annual, renamed list of 10 News Publishers That Do it Right

A theater in scenic downtown Keene, N.H., is the headquarters for Radically Rural, which uses several venues nearby.

A New Hampshire newspaper that started a "Radically Rural" symposium and a Vermont alternative weekly known for investigations and deeply reported features are on Editor & Publisher magazine's annual list of "10 News Publishers That Do It Right," formerly "10 Newspapers That Do It Right."

The Keene Sentinel was recognized for establishing, with the local Hannah Grimes Center for Entrepreneurship, Radically Rural, a two-day symposium that features expert speeches and panel discussions on several tracks, a networking event, local food and beverages, and live music. "More than 600 people from 26 states attended all parts of Radically Rural in 2019, a significant increase from the first year," Evelyn Mateos reports for E&P. The next one will be Sept. 23-24.

Sentinel President and Chief Operating Officer Terrence Williams told Mateos that sponsorships, ticket sales and ad revenue are split evenly with the Grimes center, which continues a networking event that gave birth to the symposium. The six program tracks last year were arts and culture, entrepreneurship, journalism, land and community, Main Street, and renewable energy.

"With the nearest airport located two hours away, Williams said if people want to attend the summit they have to be committed," Mateos writes, quoting him: “We can’t be one of those things where we only marginally produce something, it has to be contemporary, it has to be seen as—if not cutting edge—then at least on the leading edge of the issues that are affecting each of the tracks.”

Seven Days of Burlington, Vt., which has a large rural audience, made the list for building on a very personal piece of citizen journalism to take an in-depth look at Vermont's opioid epidemic, Mateos reports:

"In October 2018, Seven Days published an obituary for Madelyn Linsenmeir, a young, local mother who had died of causes related to opioid-use disorder. Shortly after it was published, her obit went viral with more than a thousand comments and about 4 million views online—most likely because the obit had been written by Linsenmeir’s own sister, Kate O’Neill," a former Seven Days proofreader. The paper offered her a new job: "spend a year writing about the epidemic that had killed her sister."

“Kate could write about this in a way that our journalists couldn’t,” Publisher Paula Routly said. “She was able to portray her sister with sensitivity and enough specificity and empathy. You could really understand the predicament. That seemed like a unique perspective that none of our reporters had really managed to tap into and that seemed like a very important part of understanding the problem.”

O’Neill’s series, “Hooked: Stories and Solutions from Vermont’s Opioid Crisis," started in January 2019. It examined "how Vermonters became addicted to opioids and how the epidemic drives sexual exploitation," Mateos reports. There were six stories (at about 12,000 words each), which garnered about 100,000 pageviews with an average time spent of six to seven minutes per page. . . . Seven Days created a companion website called All Our Hearts, which launched last September, to find more stories of those lost to opioids. Through the website, families can submit a form describing their loved one, and someone from the paper will follow up to do an interview." More than 50 have posted.

Others on the list of 10 were The Arizona Republic, the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, the Chicago Sun-Times, the Financial Times, Nevada's Greenspun Media Group, Argentina's La Voz del Interior, the Salt Lake Tribune and WKMG-TV of Orlando.

The News-Gazette of Champaign, Ill., earned an honorable mention for inviting more than 300 high-school athletes to its office for its "Faces of the Fall" project. "Students—nominated by their schools and dressed in full uniform—received a News-Gazette business card designed and produced in-house that each participant scanned with their cellphone to connect with the paper on social media," E&P reports. "About 70 students were invited to record radio spots promoting programming on News-Gazette Media’s three stations. Another 150 students went in front of the newsroom’s green screen and created GIFs for social media channels. Professional portraits were also published online and ran in the print edition each day through the season. The entire experience was filmed, and the video made available at news-gazette.com."

When newspapers move printing elsewhere, it gives them a chance to relocate; southwestern Ky. daily goes downtown

Left to right: Landlord Hal McCoy, Editor Zirconia Alleyne and Publisher Brandon Cox in front of the building in downtown Hopkinsville, Ky., that will be the new home of the Kentucky New Era, a small daily newspaper. (Photo by Tony Kirves)

All over the country, small daily newspapers no longer need the real estate and buildings they once did, mainly because they have moved their printing to another location, usually in the same ownership group, to save personnel and equipment-maintenance costs.

That happened when Paducah-based Paxton Media Inc. bought the Kentucky New Era in Hopkinsville and moved the printing to Owensboro. The company didn't buy the newspaper's real estate, so it's moving to a downtown building that once housed a J.C. Penney & Co. store and is directly across the street from City Hall. The paper moved from downtown in 1971.

"Publisher Brandon Cox likes the idea of getting closer to the action," writes Jennifer P. Brown, an online news entrepreneur and former New Era editor whom the paper hired to write the story of the move. Cox told her, “From an editorial perspective, we support what’s going on in downtown Hopkinsville, and we think we should put our money where our mouth is.” That took some finagling.

Brown writes, "There was only one available building with a loading dock to handle distribution of the papers when they arrive on trucks around 2:30 a.m. on the New Era’s five publication days. Hopkinsville businessman Hal McCoy made a deal to buy the former J.C. Penney building and will renovate two vacant bays on the main floor. One bay will be for McCoy, who owns and manages several residential and commercial properties in Hopkinsville. The other bay will house the New Era. . . . The news staff will have a view of Main Street through the building’s storefront window."

“It’s so important, I think, for the local news to be intimately ingrained and connected to the heart of the community it serves,” Cox told Brown. “There’s no better way to do that than to be a part of the downtown.”

Fund redevelops rural and small-town properties to help fund nonprofits in Appalachian Kentucky

Community builder Lora Smith is working to help Eastern Kentucky with a first-of-its-kind fund to boost to nonprofits serving the area. The organization also invests directly in communities on Kentucky's 54 Appalachian counties through real-estate acquisition and development to improve dilapidated small-town downtowns.

Smith

"Smith co-founded the Appalachian Impact Fund with Louisville philanthropist Brook Smith (no relation) in 2016; the organization opened its doors in January 2017 in a former hardware store the fund purchased on Main Street in Hazard," Kathie Stamps reports for The Lane Report, a Kentucky business-news outlet. "The three-story building serves as headquarters for the Foundation for Appalachian Kentucky, Appalachian Food Summit, Appalachian Arts Alliance and other nonprofits." They offer lunchtime yoga on Mondays to locals, and will soon offer co-working space and venue rental space.

Smith formerly oversaw grants in Central Appalachia for the Mary Reynolds Babcock Foundation, and worked with three other organizers to found the annual Appalachian Food Summit in 2013, which focuses on sustainable agriculture and regional food systems. "Sustainable agriculture and local food businesses are incredibly important to creating a sense of place, supporting healthy communities with good food access, and can be a real economic driver in Kentucky," Smith told Stamps. "It’s community and culture that holds us together and sustains us during difficult times . .  . And it’s our unique natural and cultural assets that are creating an exciting and bright future in the mountains."

The Corbin native has family stretching back seven generations in Whitley County, on the Tennessee border. She studied anthropology at New York University and folklore and documentaries as a graduate student at the University of North Carolina, but came back home, saying she "could never stay away too long from Kentucky and the mountains." She, her husband and their two children live on a 120-acre organic farm in Jackson County, near the northwest salient of the East Kentucky Coalfield.

Main Street historic preservation great for looks, not always good for community, writer says

Preserving historic downtown areas in small towns is great for tourism but does little to compliment the day to day life of local residents, Kelley Snowden opines for the Daily Yonder. Snowden, who lives in East Texas, says towns that follow the National Main Street Center’s methods for restoring and revitalizing historic downtowns don't provide anything practical for local residents. (Kent Kanouse photo: Las Vegas, N.M. is part of the Main Street movement)

"The historic downtown is chock full of 'unique entrepreneurial businesses,' in the language of the Texas Historical Commission, including a seemingly endless variety of antique stores," Snowden writes. "But I don’t spend a lot of time downtown. There’s nothing I need there. I don’t need antiques. I need toothpaste, something to cook for supper and toilet paper. I can’t get those downtown."

"On those rare occasions when I do go downtown, I have to compete with tourists to get my business done. The streets and sidewalks are congested with traffic, and parking is at a minimum," Snowden writes. "While I’m glad that tourists come and spend their money, I really don’t want to get into a nest of them. That’s the problem with the Main Street program. It does a great job of helping towns preserve and gussy-up their downtowns, but in and of itself, does it really serve the broader local community?"

While the program encourages small businesses opportunities, many of those businesses don't last, Snowden writes. Few hire outside of family members, and the ones that do, often pay low wages with little to no benefits. Additionally, tourism is not a consistent business and often has highs and lows and seasons.

"All this taken together means that before your town jumps on the Main Street wagon, you need to seriously consider what it will do to—and for—your community," Snowden writes. "If your goal is to restore your downtown and create a hub for tourism, that’s great. It can do that. What it can’t do is single-handedly bring larger economic development to your town."

"If you are counting on Main Street to increase the number of people moving to your town, think again," Snowden writes. "People will come for good jobs, good schools, good neighborhoods and a good local economy. They don’t come for interesting architecture, quaint antique stores or old time soda fountains." (Read more)

Rural Oklahoma town finds fun way to get residents involved, by painting downtown utility poles

One of many designs in Waynoka

A small town in Oklahoma got the community involved in a project to ingest some color into the downtown area. Waynoka, a town of just over 900 in Woods County and home to Little Sahara State Park, is a working-class town with a history as a railroad community. Its downtown utility poles were badly in need of paint, so city officials allowed local residents to paint the poles, giving them a chance to be creative, and spark some life into downtown.

"Something like this won’t draw any new visitors for you, but it could be a neat way to inject some life into what your visitors see when they do come downtown," reports the Pagosa Daily Post, of Pagosa Springs, Colo., which serves the Four Corners area where Utah, Arizona, New Mexico and Colorado meet; Woods County is one county away from the Oklahoma Panhandle, which borders southeastern Colorado. The Woods County Enterprise is not online. (Read more)

Small Business Saturday, coming this weekend, needs to have rural angles

We're not sure if Small Business Saturday, coming up this weekend, is all that rural a phenomenon, but it needs to be. Way too many small-town businesses have closed because customers flocked to the nearest Wal-Mart or other big-box store, looking for the cheapest price, and also spent time shopping at the businesses that pop up around such stores. Many of those are small businesses, but what we like to see is busy traffic (pedestrian and vehicular) in the business districts of small towns, so Small Business Saturday should be an aid for them.

The effort includes a long-
term shop-at-home campaign.

The observance "was started as a reaction to the excesses of Black Friday, which almost entirely benefit major chain retailers. It is promoted most visibly by large corporations that have many small businesses as customers, including American Express, FedEx and ClearChannel this year," reports Small Biz Survival, which bills itself as "The rural and small town business resource." We might add that such companies are also sponsoring the day in an effort to get more trade from small stores.

The Small Business Saturday website has "a section to help consumers find local businesses," Small Biz Survival notes. "This is less important for small towns, where most people know what stores are in town; they just need to be reminded to shop at home. For small towns, the big competitor isn't the big chain store next door as much as it is the Shopping Trip to the Big City. That's where we lose most of our sales." The site also offers promotions like Shift Your Shopping, a continuing shop-at-home campaign. "One day is not enough, especially since Saturday is a prime day for those trips to the Big City," Small Biz Survival says. (Read more)

Va. coal town turns to higher education for growth, puts a Walmart on top of downtown parking garage

After decades of decline in the local coal industry, Grundy, Va., has become home to a redeveloped and flood-protected downtown and, most notably, two professional schools -- and is about to get another, Brad Parke reports for the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues and The Rural Blog. (Yahoo! map)

"Suffering a substantial outmigration, especially of young adults, local leaders are looking elsewhere for ways to establish sustainable economic development," Parke writes. "The steep topography and narrow valleys have contributed to several detrimental floods that devastated its downtown. Leaders knew they had to tame these waters for the downtown to remain viable and realize its potential, but realized they ultimately had to take a new approach: higher education."

In 1997, the Appalachian School of Law opened in Grundy. In 2005 came the Appalachian College of Pharmacy. And in 2013 the Appalachian College of Optometry is scheduled to open.

Recent improvements include "a floodwall topped by a four-lane highway bypass replacing a winding, two-lane road," Parke reports, and across the river is "the Grundy Town Center, which includes a new Walmart. The steep topography forced an innovative approach. The Walmart, which opened in September 2011, sits atop a two-level parking garage, enabling developers to avoid using the limited available flat land for a conventional parking lot."

"Similar rural communities should take note of this town’s innovative approach to development," writs Parke, a student at the law school. "If ultimately successful, Grundy may become not only a model for strategic economic diversification in Appalachia, but rural America." (Read more)

N. Calif. project taught town, highway planners how to slow traffic and create a business district

Small towns bisected by major highways might learn from Willow Creek, Calif. State Highway 299 once widened to five lanes as it entered the town, presumably to let thru traffic continue at highway speed while locals made turns. But many drivers saw the stretch as a chance to make time on the Trinity Highway that winds and climbs through the Coast Ranges east of Eureka, and "might pass other vehicles at 70, 75, 80," Laura Tillman writes for the Daily Yonder.

In 2001, Tillman reports, "Those five lanes were reduced to three, with bike lanes added to either side of the road. Two years later, continuous sidewalks were added to allow pedestrians to move between downtown shops. Sycamore trees were planted to show cars this was a neighborhood, not merely the intersection of Highways 299 and 96. Traffic slowed further, which legally allowed the speed limit to be lowered to 35 miles per hour. Pedestrian crosswalks were drawn. A community downtown was created." (Google Earth photo by Bill Cook)

Also, the project was "a professional turning point" for the California Department of Transportation, which "typically looked at road building only in terms of safety and traffic flow," Tillman writes. CalTrans District Manager Rick Knapp wrote a paper about the project that influenced the policies of other states. Is your state one of them? If not, should it be? (Read more)

'Hay man' turns scarecrows into community art in Massachusetts town

Over the last few years, public arts projects have appeared across the country, successfully turning fiberglass bears, bulls, horses and baseballs into sidewalk art and sources of local pride. Rural communities are following suit, in hopes of harnessing local creativity to get folks back to Main Street.
In Pittsfield, Mass., population 45,000, the latest take on the trend is "Hay man" - a collection of 75 hay-filled scarecrow figures created by local residents, reports Tony Dobrowolski of the Berkshire Eagle. (Left: an example of the scarecrow, in photo by Darren Vanden Berge.) The project will be Pittsfield's third foray into public art, as the town hosted "Sheeptacular!" and "Art of the Game" (baseball bats) the last few years, Dobrowolski writes. "I remember when Sheeptacular! came out, and I was one of the skeptics," said Michael P. Daly, the president and CEO of Berkshire Bank, one of the event's several sponsors. "But it took off. I'm looking forward to seeing the haymen, haywomen, hay things that will be created." (Read more)