Main Street On The Street: Grand Forks, Cavalier and Lakota
More than 65 communities across North Dakota have signed up to be involved in the Main Street Initiative. Every one of these communities is different, but what are the best practices that all communities can adapt? To find out, we took a road trip to visit with local leaders like Blue Weber and Katie Rehder in Grand Forks, Cavalier Mayor Lacey Hinkle and Amie Vasichek, city auditor of Lakota. Find out more about the Main Street Initiative at mainstreetnd.com and register for the Main Street Conference on Oct. 29-31 in Bismarck, ND.
Today we're headed out on a road trip to northeast North Dakota to give you a street-level view of Governor Burgum's Main Street initiative.
Main Street on the street, if you will.
My co-pilot on this trip is Jace Beeler, one of the Governor's policy advisors, and our team lead on all things Main Street.
This is going to be a fun episode, so I hope you'll stick around as we chat with community leaders who are leading the charge in their hometowns.
Looks like Jace just got here.
Jace, how are you doing?
Good morning.
It's a beautiful morning in North Dakota.
I think we're about ready to hit the road, aren't we?
Yes, we are.
I'm just grabbing my cup of coffee and ready to go.
Alrighty, let's get started.
The Main Street Initiative is one of Governor Burgum's five strategic initiatives for his administration.
It consists of three essential pillars for North Dakota's towns.
Smart, efficient infrastructure, healthy, vibrant communities, and a 21st century workforce.
To give you a first-hand look, we're headed to Northeast North Dakota to check in with folks who are working hard to make their city a better place to call home.
We'll make stops in Lakota and Cavalier, but first we're headed to Grand Forks to meet with Blue Weber and Katie Rader of the Downtown Development Association.
Grand Forks is home to around 56,000 people today.
It was founded in 1881 as a trading hub for the northern Red River Valley area.
That river culture has persisted to the present day, where a 2,200-acre swath of land along the river known as the Greenway is a popular recreation spot for residents and visitors alike.
However, long-time residents of the state know that Grand Forks hasn't always had a great relationship with the river.
In 1997, the city was flooded, resulting in an evacuation that, at the time, was the largest single-city evacuation in the U.S. since the Civil War.
If the damage from the water wasn't bad enough, a fire tore through downtown during the flood and caused catastrophic damage.
Twenty years later, Grand Forks has rebuilt their downtown into a vibrant, popular area with frequent events and a large business presence.
Alright, well we made it to Grand Forks.
Here we are.
We're sitting down at the Grand Forks Downtown Development Association with Blue Weber and Katie Rader of the Grand Forks Downtown Development Association.
Guys, thanks for being here with us.
Yeah, thanks for having us.
So we should start off by just talking a little bit about what does your organization do?
What do you do within the organization?
How long have you been here?
Just give us a little background.
Yeah, so I'll start with where I started here.
I started about April last year.
I'm going to say it as honestly as possible.
This is my dream job.
It's something that everything that I was doing in town kind of set me up to get excited about it.
And so I got here and still having more fun than I should.
And what's your role here?
I'm the executive director, meaning I have no idea what I do.
Katie is the one who actually gets stuff done.
I'm the one who is usually at this level.
My hands are very high in the air.
Just kind of no idea.
I have a lot of fun each time.
Yeah, and I started a few months after Blue in June last year.
I'm the marketing and event coordinator, so I am doing tons of stuff day to day, marketing for events, downtown projects, organizing 11 events a year.
Some of them have 20,000 people, some of them only have 200 people, so it's a pretty big range.
Well, and this year almost is a little bit more of an exceptional year with one of our campaigns that we're pushing.
And so to say she's doing 11 events is actually about, I think, 32 events.
So it's a little bit additional.
So that sounds like a lot of programming that you guys are pushing through your organization.
Is that a big focus of what you guys are doing here?
Um, it's, it's a big thing.
So we always say we wear too many hats here.
It's one of the hats that we're constantly trying to figure out how we hand that hat off to more people, just because the programming is really important for us.
But the programming is more important than the events, I guess is an easy way to put it.
Just because we don't want to always be putting all of our time into ensuring that 20,000 people are visiting for an afternoon.
We want to showcase that an urban center has a lifestyle to it.
A lot of the programming this year for our 2020 Vision campaign has been one-time pop-up activities and events.
So every other Tuesday we've had something going on from...
Riding your bike downtown and getting a coffee or a beer.
Or us setting up a temporary dog park for people.
Dogs of downtown was one of the best.
We took an empty plot of land downtown to show people what was possible and we just put up snow fencing and turned it into a dog park.
We really over-analyzed what we were going to do.
We tried to design a nice little agility course and have vendors there.
Quickly realized that was kind of a dumb move.
People just want a dog park.
Dogs can have fun without the course.
Dogs can have fun.
And every single time that I say this, I always up the number, so I'm going to be as honest as possible.
We had about 200 dogs in the span of...
Three hours?
The important part of all those is to show that we don't need events to bring people downtown.
It's a lifestyle that's inherent downtown.
You can work, live, learn, and play all within a six-block radius.
That's exactly what the Main Street Initiative is trying to do, specifically around the healthy, vibrant community pillar of the Main Street Initiative, is how do you get citizens to really...
Take their community and make it their own, and it sounds like that's what you're all doing.
So are there any events or programs that you're utilizing that you think, man, if every community around the state would do this, this is working really well?
I would 100% go with those pop-ups.
I mean, they're not intended to get 5,000 people out.
They're intended to make a giant impact for people anywhere from 20 people up to 2,000, I guess.
Yeah.
So you mentioned the 2020 Vision campaign a couple of times now.
What is that?
What does that mean for Grand Forks?
Is that something you guys are driving?
So our very first day on the job, it was basically two things got handed to us.
It was, okay, we have a giant construction project next year, and in four months you guys need to hold the downtown conference.
So we got to be...
A little bit excited and a little bit flabbergasted at what we were handed with.
But downtown conference was a lot of fun last year.
And with that construction project, we had already started the dialogue of, okay, we know that this is going to be our main artery through downtown.
How do we handle this?
How do we support businesses?
But also, who else has learned from opportunities like this around the communities?
And so we reached out to, what was the place in Hartford?
Yep, Hartford, Connecticut.
They did a lot of punny signage.
And so getting diggy with it, they had on fences and stuff like that.
So a lot of our marketing that's been pushed out for 2020 Vision Campaign has been to talk about that.
We also did community engagement.
So to kind of pump the brakes, what 2020 Vision was was to handle the construction and do it in a four-pronged attack.
Yeah.
Marketing, what else did we do for it?
Marketing, community engagement, placemaking.
And our fourth one was...
Wayfinding.
Wayfinding.
And the placemaking is really...
It was one of the keys for us.
That's where we brought in Bridget, our community organizer, which is just a fancy term for she's there to make things happen.
And we didn't want her to be an event planner, and we didn't want her to be a marketer.
We have somebody who's better than anybody at both of those things.
So how do we create this position and have it be very impactful for a six-month period?
Mm-hmm.
And it was really helpful in the sense that we were able to get out in front of construction.
So we have some businesses who aren't having a good year.
I don't think any business is having a good year, but nobody is calling us saying, hey, I need to close my doors next week.
This sucks.
And that was one of our biggest targets was we don't want any businesses to close during the construction.
So we do coffee updates every other Monday, and that's where we get a group of people together.
We get the main contractor for some of the developments as well as the Demers construction, and we have open dialogue.
So that way, any information that needs to go out is there.
They can ask questions right there.
They can ask us questions to ask later, stuff like that.
So the construction obviously poses some challenges, but it's also going to pose some opportunities in the future.
And from what I understand of it, you know, there could be some multimodal transportation pieces of it.
You know, the third pillar of our initiative is the smart, efficient infrastructure.
And I think the Demers project is an example of that.
Can you talk about that a little bit?
Yeah, I think one of the biggest things I'm excited for for the Demers reconstruction is the actual streetscape, which is going to look way different than previously.
All new bike racks, benches, seating, trash cans, pillars, brand new lighting.
Basically creating an entire walkable corridor.
Like, I don't know how much time you guys have spent walking down Demers, but it's not the most welcoming street.
There's cars flying down at 40 miles an hour and getting a grocery store as well down the road.
I mean, these are the things that it all helps to kind of create that more smart infrastructure.
And so there's been some tactical urbanists.
I don't know who's doing it, but somebody's out spray painting bike sharrows on the road.
And so it's been really nice seeing these bike activists out really pushing this too.
And you can see the people want it here.
You mentioned those pieces, the bike, walkability, the benches, the pillars.
Why does that matter for a community?
Some of the things we run into across the state is that we want infrastructure and traditional roads, sewers, that type of thing.
Why do some of these other features matter to a community and why are they important to us?
I've got a good answer for this one.
So the third pillar of the Main Street, the 21st century workforce.
And you can see it.
I mean, 66% of millennials are moving to a city before they actually go get a job, meaning they're finding the places that are cool.
And if we're not being cool by using healthy, vibrant communities and smart infrastructure, They're going to bail.
Like, why would they want to come here if we don't have anything good when they could go move to Minneapolis?
What, the housing is more expensive?
I'm sorry, but these aren't the determinants that are holding people back.
We're seeing less and less people needing cars, and so by having better public transit, by having better bike infrastructure, we're seeing people actually excited about being part of their community, which in turn just brings in a new revolving door of leadership, which in turn helps all of those new ideas.
And so it's the thing that makes me really excited is like, by doing these things, we're actually increasing our talent, we're actually increasing our workforce, which only in turn helps everything else out.
Absolutely.
So tell me then, you know, the Main Street Initiative, obviously a lot of the principles we talk about are local decisions, and they happen at the local community level.
It's really dependent on those community leaders to make it happen.
So how has the Main Street Initiative helped you all in your work within the community make changes?
So, my favorite word about Grand Forks is collaboration.
It's been amazing here.
And we spend time with the people who run the 701 coworking space.
We spend time with the YPs, with the EDC, the Chamber.
It's the most collaborative community I've ever seen.
And it's not just young people coming in over and taking everything over.
It's The old guard is very much inviting the new people into the community and figuring out how do we do this all together.
And so one big push for us has been a good, healthy downtown means a good, healthy community.
And it's vice versa.
If our strip mall street out on 32nd isn't doing well, that kind of means that downtown isn't doing well.
And so it is a giant ecosystem.
And I use the expression of like a human body.
Yeah, downtown is the heart that keeps everything thumping and moving.
If you chop off an arm on a human body, it's going to bleed out.
So we need to make sure that everything's doing well at the same time.
And that collaboration has been important for that.
The people who run our Alaris Center, so our huge concert hall, they had a conference here earlier this year.
They brought every single person downtown for a giant kind of bash here.
And the point was, look, if you're not working with your community, even as a giant event center like that, your community isn't doing well.
I'm wondering, should we take a little walk?
Yeah, we'd love that.
It's almost as if we love this town or something.
The city of Grand Forks and the North Dakota Department of Transportation have been hard at work on a project to reconstruct Demers Avenue in Grand Forks, a street that serves as a central corridor for traffic headed downtown.
During this project, several businesses that line the street have a chain-link fence running along the sidewalk separating them from the construction.
Despite the interruption to traffic, businesses have been on track with sales from previous years.
Thanks to business owners' marketing efforts combined with the Downtown Development Association, the sidewalks are still full of activity.
We're walking through downtown Grand Forks here and there's some lights over the streets, flower pots on the street lights, and just a lot of things that make it kind of a homey feel and just a lot of things that make it kind of a homey feel that really bring, attract people Well, and one of the biggest obstacles we had, I would say, four or five years ago was housing downtown.
We just had none of it.
So it's been our big push, and now we're finally seeing so much more come in that we're being intelligent about what the next development is and not only doing that kind of property.
So, you know, the nice thing about this infrastructure in the downtown is, you know, it's just replacing existing roads, replacing existing sewers, but there's no new fire, police, you know, snow plows, nothing new needed.
So it's really keeping things financially tight for the community, right?
Good urbanism.
Good urbanist principles are not building suburbs that you have to put in all these tax dollars just to make one house work.
All of this, like you said, it's already existing and so how do you build on that and incrementally building up and building around is a lot better way to do a good healthy downtown.
Absolutely.
I see over there in the corner there, is that a wheel?
A ferris wheel?
The water wheel?
What do we got over there?
What's that?
So that's become our indicator of our community.
I would say that it is the symbol of Grand Forks.
Okay.
Yeah.
Especially downtown.
Now, obviously, you know, water, you talked about Grand Forks being kind of a symbol as it relates to water.
Obviously, you know, in Grand Forks' history, there's been a great excitement, but, you know, some tragedy as it relates to water as well.
But things have changed for the better, you know, after the 97 flood.
So tell us a little bit about, you know, the community.
Community center, the greenway, what has come of what was originally a tragedy?
So many people here identify that as like a starting point for Grand Forks when neither of us grew up here.
So it's not a starting point for us.
And so I celebrate it in a different light and talk about where we are, not where we came from.
We're part of this huge group of people who activate the Greenway all the time.
So we're doing one of our next pop-ups is a picnic down on the Greenway.
So we're providing baskets to families to go and have a picnic.
We have musicians and we have some little yard games.
And so getting people out there and seeing that downtown is very interesting here in the sense that our downtown has Central Park.
No other community the size of our city has something that's an amenity like that in the heart of its downtown.
Because we can walk right across the river and we're still in downtown.
And so it's just a very interesting thing having the boathouse, having all that greenway stuff.
Yeah, the huge bike system.
A lot of people snowmobile on the river in the winter.
There's a lot of fishing, kayaking.
Snowmobiling, cross-country skiing.
I mean, it's an outdoor hub.
So you mentioned pop-ups.
A lot of our communities in North Dakota are maybe a little smaller, so they would worry about, well, how can we do it?
We don't have the funding.
We don't have large, lots of businesses.
How can a smaller community take some of these principles and incorporate it?
I kind of have an idea of an answer on that one.
Yeah, one of the things I would recommend is one of our last pop-ups we had.
We had Astronomy Night on the Greenway.
And we worked with a few other organizations to actually get telescopes on the Greenway that they were using.
So we had no cost in that.
It brought a lot of people down.
So just sort of reaching out and seeing what's in your community already.
I just think that's really important for those small communities is make sure to reach out to everybody.
And I think sometimes we get this Fargo versus North Dakota mentality.
And so we've been trying to go out and visit all the other communities as well as Fargo and learn and figure out how we do stuff better.
So on Work Worth Doing, we like to close every chat we have with our guests.
What makes this work worth doing?
What do you find valuable about this?
Want me to start?
Yeah, sure.
I have so much fun.
Every single day I'm going home to my fiancé and I currently feel like there's going to be a day when I wake up and none of this is real.
As somebody who has worked odd jobs at Starbucks, has worked in bakeries, has worked in newspapers...
This job just doesn't feel like a job.
And the old statement of, you know, find a job that you love and you'll never have to work a day in your life.
It's very true.
I get to hang out with one of my best friends each day and we're constantly laughing to the point where we cry when we come up with new ideas.
So for me, it's the enjoyment that I get out of this.
And I always welcome every single person to be part of that because they can come have fun with us too.
Yeah, I definitely agree.
And I just think it's crazy having this job and the type of downtown ecosystem that I've been brought into and just the connections I have.
Most of my best friends work downtown, so it's just great being able to walk down the street, see people, do little projects downtown.
Ecosystem.
It's a good word for it.
It's not just the work that we do, it's the people that we have around us.
And that's kind of inherent to a good downtown, in my opinion, is fun people.
Blue, Katie, thanks for having us.
Thanks, guys.
After talking with Blue and Katy and Grand Forks to learn how one of our largest cities is taking part in the Main Street Initiative, we wanted to see what these principles look like in a mid-sized town in northeast North Dakota.
So we got back on the road and headed north to Cavalier.
At 1,300 people, Cavalier is the largest town in Pemina County and just a quick drive from the Canadian border.
We decided to go to Cavalier because they are doing some really unique work in their community.
Their main street is booming with a variety of businesses from retail to restaurants, and the local community has done some great work to embrace outdoor recreation in all seasons.
Well, I don't know if you can hear this, but we just stepped out of the car in Cavalier and there's music playing on the street.
I tell you, it's a lively atmosphere here in Main Street Cavalier.
We've got music playing in the background.
We've got Blue Fox Coffee House.
There's just a lot going on.
Excited to hear about it.
Let's head on in.
Hi, Mayor.
Mark Staples, nice to meet you.
Nice to meet you.
Hello.
Hi.
How are you, Mayor?
Good, how are you?
Good to see you again.
Come on in over here.
Well, thanks for having us, Mayor.
You know, before we jump into the business, why don't we just start, you know, Mayor up in Cavalier, tell us a little bit about your background, what got you here, why you decided to jump in the public service role, and just give us a little background.
Yeah, so I was born and raised in Cavalier, and I was kind of that girl that was like, once I graduate, I'm leaving town, I'm never coming back.
And then you get out into the real world and you realize, hey, it's not so bad back in Cavalier.
So after I graduated college, I came back and I lived here for a few years.
I got interested with what was going on in the city and got on city council and did two years as a councilman.
And then our previous mayor was stepping down and I had some community members that approached me and said, hey, would you ever be interested in running for mayor?
And at first I was like, you know, I've only got two years under my belt with this whole city council thing.
I don't know if I'm ready.
And everybody's like, nope, you got this.
You go for it.
You'll do just fine.
So I've been mayor for about a year and so far so good.
Wonderful.
Well, obviously Cavalier is one of our Main Street communities that the governor is working on.
We had an opportunity to visit here last fall with the Department of Commerce.
So one of the things that we wanted to do is come out and just hear from community leaders.
What are the things that you're working on?
What are the things that your community wants that are part of the pillars of the Main Street Initiative?
We had a local business owner here by the name of Kyle Gagner, and he has NODAC Insurance.
And when he heard that we were looking for a new building for our police department, he said, hey, I think that my building would be a great fit for these guys, and I can buy a building on Main Street and remodel it and, you know, make Main Street that much better and...
Stand out a little bit.
And so we jumped on that.
And I don't know if you had a chance to go down Main Street and see the new Nodak Insurance building, but it's absolutely fabulous.
Kyle did a great job.
He's got another building on Main Street that he purchased a few years ago too.
And he's gotten some new businesses in there and he's been...
Yeah, so kind of a public-private partnership that really helps invest in the downtown of the community.
For sure, absolutely.
When you get a business owner coming in and wanting to work with the city and beautifying Main Street, what does that do for the community?
You know, I think that everybody kind of sees, hey, we can work together as one and we can all do this.
It doesn't just have to be the city government.
It doesn't have to be one-sided.
We can all do our part together and make our community look better.
Well, one of the things we were commenting on as we came in, you know, you have stringed lights over the street, you've got music playing in the street.
So, you know, how does the community here utilize this space to really, you know, attract people to live here, work here, enjoy the community?
So, you know, I would say, what was it, almost two years ago that Governor Burgum had his Main Street Summit.
And myself and the chamber director and our auditor at that time went out to that summit and we were just blown away by all of these fabulous ideas and so we brought those back to Cavalier and we did the string lights and we started playing music on Main Street and we also we had um A little grassy area on Main Street and so we turned it into a pocket park.
We did some landscaping.
We put up some picnic tables and we've utilized that space for local events.
We've got an event called Rock and Retail Thursdays where we bring food trucks to town and the stores stay open later.
The music stays and plays late.
And then we've had people, like, we've got a yoga instructor that has come and done some classes out in, you know, this little grassy area and people can do yoga outside and, you know, just very family friendly and bringing people out to your main street.
And we've had businesses say, you know, wow, we sold something we thought we would never ever sell and we sold it at Rockin' Retail.
Like, we are going to participate in this.
And so it's been great for the community, but also...
I will say we just hired a new auditor and she's from Arizona.
And so when she came to check out Cavalier, she did a little research beforehand.
And so when she came to interview, she said, you know, I've been looking into Cavalier and this just looks, you guys are so, um, Community friendly and you're really invested in your community and having events going on and bringing people out and your main street just looks great.
And so that was a big plus for her and one of the reasons that she chose to apply and interview.
Yeah, so you saw the benefits of investing in Main Street directly for the city, of being able to attract someone.
It's something that we talk about across the state, that the cores of our communities doesn't necessarily need to be downtown, but a main core of dense mixed-use space really helps attract and retain those workers.
For sure, absolutely.
So you've seen it firsthand.
Yeah, we definitely have.
That's terrific.
Yeah.
So, you know, one of the things, obviously, Cavalier's been a good partner in the Governor's Main Street Initiative.
Understand that a couple years ago, you've been working through the North Dakota Parks and Recreation for some grants that you're using to connect to the state park that's not far away.
And I think, from what I understand, had success with the GoFundMe.
Can you talk a little bit about that work?
So, you know, are you talking more like the bike path and that kind of stuff?
So that, honestly, that has just been a group of volunteers who love the bike path and it's in really tough shape but it's such an asset to our community and an asset to Icelandic State Park.
It really, we get a huge draw of Canadian visitors.
Out to the state park and so that is kind of our our bridge to bring them to town and so it's been awesome.
We've gotten grant dollars through the state and that group is is working really hard to to keep that going.
Unfortunately they they've had a few hang-ups and they haven't been able to get full funding but they're still working and they're gonna keep trying and so hopefully we can we can repair that so that we can make it better.
Well, that's, I mean, dedicated volunteers that just don't give up are critical to all the communities.
And so, you know, we love that connection of outdoor recreation with the Main Street Initiative.
It all connects together.
You know, we talk to communities all over the state.
Some this size, some larger, some smaller.
Help share the message of what are some tips that community leaders could do?
What are the steps that you took to get people involved to really kind of create a coalition and collaboration to work on projects that maybe haven't been worked on before?
Right.
I mean, it really...
It takes the heart of a lot of people who just care about your community.
And if you can all come together and work together and have a goal and a vision, you can really get these things done.
I know one of the things we talked about when we were here last fall was youth engagement and how you're connecting with the youth in the community.
Is there anything going on related to youth?
Yeah, you know what?
That's really kind of taken off.
It's been one of my goals to get the youth involved.
And so something that I started last fall in the school was our youth leadership program.
And so what I do, I go into the school Once a month.
And I meet with this group of students.
And I'm there for about a half hour.
And we talk about different things going on in the community.
And I got these kids involved on different...
Community groups?
Yeah, yeah.
Things like that?
Different boards.
The chamber?
Yeah, yeah.
So we've got a student on the chamber board.
We've got a student on the library board.
We've got a student on the rec board.
They come to retail committee meetings.
So they go to all of these different committees every month and they go and they have their input and they listen to what's going on in the community and then they come back when I meet with them and we talk about all of it and what's going on.
And they'll even come to council meetings too just to hear what's going on at the council meetings and what they're learning at their different meetings and then, you know, how can we take that out into the community and we've had success with that.
Our rec director wanted to start a youth room For these kids to go, you know, some of them who aren't involved in sports or they don't have anywhere to go after school.
And so she said, you know, I want a room, I want a place for them to go and hang out so they're not just wandering the streets of Cavalier with nothing to do.
That is amazing.
It's something that Governor Burgum's been talking about since the beginning of the Main Street Initiative.
When we're building communities, we can't build for what we think needs to be built for.
We have to talk to the next generation, find out what they want in order to keep them here, to work here, join the workforce, all that good stuff.
To have representation from students on all of those boards, wow, you're ahead of most communities.
What a simple, no-cost addition to all of your community groups.
It's not like...
I'm not looking for a specific project.
I mean, these kids are so, so busy.
I'm just looking for their input and honestly they want that too.
They want their voices to be heard and so when they go to these different meetings they get that justification that hey we're being listened to and I'm blown away by their ideas.
They have such great ideas.
These young people are so smart.
I'm so impressed by them and so I feel like I'm learning so much from them but they're also learning so much about their community and so It's just a win for everybody all around, and it's creating that vested interest in them that, hey, you know what?
This isn't such a bad place, and I might want to come back here someday, too.
Absolutely.
Well, what a great tip for all the community leaders out there, too.
They've got this great asset, the youth in their community, available to them.
Right.
Really, would you say all you have to do is ask?
Yeah.
And they're willing to help out.
I think they're kind of skeptical at first, but I reached out to the superintendent, and I reached out to...
A couple instructors that these kids look up to in the school system and said, you know, how can I engage them?
And honestly, once we got the ball rolling, like, and now they're comfortable with me and they're able to talk one-on-one with me.
Because a lot of times, like, if they're sitting at a city council meeting and things get brought up, they're a little more hesitant to speak up.
But then they'll come to me and when we're talking one-on-one, they'll say, okay.
What does a mill mean?
What does that mean?
You know, they have these questions that they're asking about, and so we can really hash it out one-on-one and they can get their questions answered, and it's great.
And as far as, you know, bringing attention to your Main Street, getting people downtown, Cavalier in particular has had a particularly interesting Main Street and some worldwide attention to your Main Street.
Can you talk about what it is that's made people interested in Cavalier and where all this attention is coming from?
You know, I would say it probably started with our webcam.
I think last time I checked, it had like 8.4 million views or something.
It's crazy.
It's absolutely crazy.
When we started that webcam, I don't think anybody ever thought that it would take off the way that it did.
It's just nuts.
We had another local community member who has a place in Park Rapids, Minnesota, and he said that they had a webcam, and so he said, you know, I think that this would just be fabulous for Cavalier, and I see it down there, and it would just be great.
And again, there was some resistance.
The chamber actually does it.
So there was some resistance on the board, but it was like, okay, let's do this.
And he said, I will buy the camera.
You know, let's set it up.
Let's see how it takes off.
And it's just, it's crazy.
The chamber director says, you know, in the winter, if there's a storm and all of a sudden the camera gets blocked, she gets emails and phone calls like crazy.
Like, I can't see what's going on in Cavalier.
Your webcam is blocked.
But there have been people who will watch this.
I think that they see your small town, North Dakota, that it's still alive.
It's not something of the past.
We still have this simple but great quality of life.
There's something deeply appealing about looking at all the activity that's going on in a Yeah, for sure.
Have you found technology like that or social media or anything like that to be a useful tool when you're trying to drum up activity downtown?
Absolutely.
I would say it's probably your number one tool.
I mean, that's how you get the word out.
That's how you get people interested and they're checking those things all the time and it just seems to be the most efficient way to connect with people.
Well, you had talked about the pocket park, you know, and I think community spaces are one of the pieces that we try to push with the Main Street Initiative, encourage communities to figure out how can you incorporate some type of community space in your Main Street, your local community.
Wondering, maybe we should take a walk down to take a look at the pocket park?
For sure.
It's fabulous.
It's great.
Well, we are walking down Main Street and Cavalier here.
You can hear the music playing maybe.
We're heading over to the Pocket Park.
So tell us a little bit about some of the businesses and some of the restaurants, things you've got going on down here.
Well, we have a fabulous Main Street, and I would say it's definitely kudos to our local businesses.
We've got a great Wayne's Variety Store right there, and Main Street Floral, Studio Alon.
It's kind of a wellness shop.
It's been great for...
For our younger population that is moving back to the area, they love getting pampered.
So it's a great asset for Main Street.
But we've also got our local cafe and the Presbyterian Women's Rummage.
It's kind of a little thrift store and a hardware store.
And so I would say our Main Street has a lot to offer.
We've got a little bit of everything.
The He-Mart down there, you can find any kind of hunting or fishing or any kind of outdoor equipment.
You know, some communities might be a little intimidated about doing a project like this, about the cost.
You know, how did you manage that with the resources needed?
You know, we checked out different grants that were available, and we utilized those as much as we could, and then it was definitely a majority was city paid for.
Once we did it, I will say there was some resistance, and we did hear about it from people in the community, but now that it's here and now that it's being utilized like it is, it's been really positive, it's been really great, and I think that people really appreciate it.
Well, that's great.
And probably something that you heard from some of the younger folks and some community members that you needed some type of space.
Yeah, some type of space where you can hang out downtown.
And, you know, it's not just a summer space.
We utilize this in the winter.
We have, oh, I've got to think, our Christmas.
We do like a Moonlight Madness where all the stores are open late.
And then we do different door prizes and drawings.
And it all takes place right down here in the Pocket Park.
Yeah.
Well, and that's the thing.
In North Dakota, we have to be smart about embracing the winter.
We can't shy away from the fact that we experience winter in North Dakota.
I mean, finding ways to program around that is hugely beneficial.
Yeah, and to take a good lesson from Cavalier here is, like Mark said, we've got to embrace the winter.
Right now, a lot of our communities shut down for six months out of the year, so doing ideas like this that don't cost a lot are a way to get people out and about.
Mayor, on the show, we like to ask people...
In the work they do every day to make their towns a better place, make their community a better place, make North Dakota a better place, what makes the work worth doing for you?
I just love this town.
I love seeing it grow.
I love seeing it flourish.
And so when things are taking off and when I see that the state is taking interest in what we're doing, I would say that's a success for me.
And I'm just really proud of Cavalier.
And so I just want to see it grow.
Jason and I stopped for lunch at the Blue Fox Coffee House in Cavalier, and then it was back on the road.
We drove through the wonderful towns of Mountain, Edinburgh, and Michigan on the way to our last stop of the day, Lakota.
Home to approximately 650 North Dakotans, Lakota is a great example of how our small towns are building better communities.
Just over 20 miles east of Devils Lake, this town is rich with historic architecture, a lively farmers market, and ongoing infrastructure improvements.
We're meeting with Amy Vasicek, City Auditor, to hear her thoughts on how the Main Street Initiative is helping her community.
Hi!
Are you Amy?
Yes, I'm Amy.
Hi, Amy.
Mark, nice to meet you.
Mark, nice to meet you.
Hi, Amy, I'm Jace.
Jace, nice to meet you guys.
Nice to meet you.
And here we are in Lakota at Lakota City Hall.
We're sitting down with the City Auditor, Amy Vasacek.
Amy, thank you so much for taking the time to be with us.
Yeah, thank you guys for coming here.
It's great.
Well, Amy, so you've been with the City of Lakota now for about 10 years.
Tell us, give us a little insight into your background and, you know, what made you decide to get into this work?
Sure.
So I started out at a bank in Park River, North Dakota and I was there for about eight years.
I actually started there when I was in high school as a part-time summer job and continued on to that.
And I met my soon-to-be husband and he was living in Lakota.
So that's kind of brought in with the job.
I commuted for about a year and then got this wonderful job at the city and it just was fate.
Well, that's great.
Well, it takes a special person to jump into public service like this and dedicate so much of their life to it.
So, you know, 10 years is a good amount of time for experience to get to see some challenges and opportunities that the city has.
Have there anything that's kind of come up to the top as, you know, problems that you see or big successes that you've had?
Anything that jumps to mind right away?
Oh, gosh.
Well, you kind of see a variety of things in this line of work.
Specifically, I guess one thing that I was really involved with is getting our child care center in town.
Child care was a great need in the city of Lakota, and we're currently at close to full capacity there, and it just seems like these kids are coming out of the woodwork all over, and it's been exciting to see.
And child care, if I can jump in for a sec, child care has been an issue that communities all across the state are facing.
So if you have any more details you can share on that and some of the process you went through and ways you were able to solve that issue, we'd love to hear about that too.
Sure, sure, yeah.
I wish I had an idea out of the box type of thing so everyone could follow it.
It really was on a whim.
It was a hope and a whim by everybody.
It started out with our Lakota Economic Development.
We decided to do a survey and just see what was the need and And to really just kind of go around in the community and see if there's any donations or efforts involved with anybody that could contribute.
The economic development started off by doing a pledge of a certain dollar amount right away so people could see that there was...
There's excitement involved and people would want to piggyback off that and we got a lot of response from our businesses in the area that were very supportive of it as it would benefit their employees as well.
And it really was a community involvement project.
It was all labor.
The labor was pretty much all volunteer.
Where we had just a day to put up sheetrock.
And I don't know how many people showed up, but it was really impressive.
People that wouldn't even be affected by childcare.
I mean, it was really impressive that people could see the need, and it was fortunate for that project.
That's one of the great things about North Dakota, right?
We have citizens that are willing to jump in and help out.
So, you know, the Main Street Initiative is really, it's a local effort.
You know, the state wants to help provide information to help see if we can navigate funding to assist communities with projects and ideas that they have.
But, you know, Lakota is a Main Street community.
Tell us a little bit about, you know, maybe why Lakota joined on and some of the projects or ideas that are coming from your discussions and work.
Sure.
So Lakota signed up.
Our mayor currently is a member of the North Dakota League of Cities Board of Directors, and it was a suggestion by him actually to be part of it, and it sounded like an exciting program the governor kicked off.
We just were really excited about the networking of it as well.
I think Emily Brown at the office there has done a great job with all these webinars and just kind of connecting everybody, large or small, to just kind of get ideas from One thing that we are really struggling with right now is our grocery store has recently closed and Emily has contacted me with any help that she could provide and any ideas she can assist with and just reaching out and just seeing what other communities have done.
That has been one exciting thing about it because she actually contacted me.
She said she heard That it was closing and I was wondering if there was anything she could do.
And I think that just built our relationship prior to that, that she took the initiative to do that.
And with the Main Street Initiative, we hosted a meeting as well, a community meeting, and that was really beneficial to get anybody interested, whether they were...
You know, a business owner or just an employee or, you know, students involved just to get bounce ideas off of each other.
And it really was exciting to see all the energy in there.
I wish we had more time.
We only, I think, allotted for two hours, I think.
And it just seemed to go by so fast.
We even considered trying to do a quarterly meeting just to kind of continue that conversation.
And to include the youth was one big, big point that came across that meeting that day and to possibly do some sort of co-op with the school to some work program or something like that.
And that's where it starts is with those conversations.
And it's really fun to see that.
Absolutely.
Well, you know, youth engagement has been a big topic around the Main Street Initiative, and it's good to hear that you all are working on that.
I know that we've got the Main Street Youth Council now, and you have Macy from right here in Lakota that is a part of that council.
So it's good to see that your youth are getting engaged at the local level, but also at the state level.
Yep, yep, Macy's a really smart girl and we're really excited that she's part of that council too.
One of the things we noticed coming in, we saw a sign for the farmer's market, I think tonight, right?
Tonight, so a unique thing that a lot of our towns have across the state.
Tell us a little bit, how long has that been going on?
Has it been something that's been happening for quite a while?
Yeah, I think that's been at least six years that we've done that.
We started it, it's always been every Tuesday in the summer months, July through September.
And we started that right out on the frontage road, actually, at our community center.
We would be on the outside just so we'd get the traffic off Highway 2. We decided to move it to the park about three years ago, and that seems to be really beneficial.
It's kind of more...
Nice setting, I guess, in the park and you have the bathrooms and everything like that.
And it seems like our community really likes that.
Our park board actually puts on a $5 lunch and all proceeds go to the pool project.
They've been doing that.
I think this is their third year doing that.
So it's been an ongoing effort, but it seems like it brings everybody to the farmer's market and they almost have to flicker on and off the lights for them to go home at the end of it because they love that conversation.
They like to stick around and hang out.
It's been pretty cool.
Absolutely.
So, you know, one of the pieces with the Main Street Initiative is helping to share ideas.
And we go from, you know, our largest communities to our smallest communities.
And really, it's up to each one of them to, you know, do what's best for their community.
So what advice would you have for communities out there, for city leaders, for volunteers, to get engaged, to kind of take their community in their own hands?
Sure.
I would say get involved any way you possibly can, whether there's an organization that's out there in your town.
You can be a worker.
You can be a leader with it.
You can do as much as you want, but get involved.
Get out there as much as you possibly can.
And call people.
Call your neighboring town, anyone there.
That have successful projects or ideas.
Everyone's really nice about sharing things.
And they want to see other people succeed, towns succeed.
And I think that's really nice about North Dakota.
Not sure if you had a chance to attend the Main Street Summit about a year and a half ago.
We have a Main Street Summit coming up at the end of October, October 29th through the 31st in Bismarck, where we're bringing community leaders from across the state, business leaders, non-profit leaders together to talk about some of these community challenges, but also network and get to know each other so you have those connections.
One of the pillars of the Main Street Initiative is smart, efficient infrastructure.
I understand you all have been working closely with the Bank of North Dakota on a project here in Lakota.
I want to touch on that.
Yeah, so our streets in town here are about 20 years old.
We were fortunate enough to get funding through the Bank of North Dakota, so it's a low-interest loan.
And it'll be an assessment project to our residents and commercial properties.
But we're on year two of this project.
Hopefully wrapping it up by September 1st is the hope, cross your fingers.
But yeah, it's been really a good thing for our town.
It was very needed.
We just got done with our, or just wrapping up with our water tower, and we had a water treatment plant renovation a couple years ago.
So we're just brand new, it feels like.
Well, it's an important piece, you know, maintaining all that infrastructure.
That's one of the pieces we talk about is You know, if we can maintain the existing infrastructure that we have, we can, you know, really help create financially solvent communities in the long term.
So kudos to you in Lakota for managing that.
Well, Amy, as we're wrapping up here today, one thing we like to ask every guest on Work Worth Doing is to reflect on the work they do to help make North Dakota a better place and tell us what makes it work worth doing.
Just seeing anything get accomplished.
There's fails.
There obviously is.
There's some challenges.
But seeing a project get accomplished, seeing people happy to be here, it's really rewarding to be doing the job that you do.
Getting to see people, you know, coming out and partaking in the fruits of your labor.
I mean, that's very exciting.
Yeah.
That's great.
Well, you know, we heard it here that, you know, the networking opportunities for the Main Street Initiative with all the community leaders are extremely important, beneficial.
So, you know, encourage all of the listeners, check with your city leaders.
If you are a city leader and haven't signed up, sign up as a Main Street community through the Department of Commerce and help build that network of active community builders across the state.
All of our cities are unique, but our problems are not all unique.
So there's a lot that can be gained from talking to each other and being a resource.
Absolutely.
I would just state that it's very easy to sign up as a Main Street Initiative community.
It was just an online thing.
It was very simple, and I think it would be worth everyone's time to sign up as one.
For those of you wondering, you can go to MainStreetND.com to check it out.
Thanks for joining us, Amy.
Yeah, thank you.
We are extremely grateful to all the folks who took time to meet with us on our road trip.
Blue Weber, Katie Rader, Mayor Lacey Hinkle, and Amy Vasacek.
Our local leaders are making huge strides in their communities all across the state, and this fall, hundreds of those community-minded individuals will be joining us in Bismarck for the Main Street Conference on October 29th through the 31st.
We would love to see you there.
Go to MainStreetND.com for more information.
Thanks so much to our audio producer, Alicia Jolliffe, for putting today's show together, and thanks to Jace Beeler for being my road trip co-pilot.
Finally, make sure to check out the archive of past episodes of Work Worth Doing online at governor.nd.gov slash podcast.
