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Last night, about a hundred Marceline residents assembled at the Walsworth Community Center to envision what the downtown business district of Disney’s boyhood home could become if they all worked together. While no one suggested that the Disneyland of Walt’s youth be abandoned, Marceline Chamber Vice-President Steve Long urged the gathering to “live in the present and prepare for the future.” Continuing that theme, Dr. Long reminded his listeners, “We now have a digital highway; you need to have a virtual business as well as one of brick and mortar.”
Marceline Mayor Bill Stuart echoed that sentiment from the audience when he suggested building a website that is positive and meaningful rather than critical and counterproductive. Stuart discounted the currency of print journalism in the eyes of youth, but there wasn’t a single representative of the 30-and-under crowd present to cheer him on. Presumably, they were too preoccupied wandering through the blogosphere to attend. “We’ve got to get some of our younger people here,” asserted Mayor Stuart. “We need them to participate, volunteer, serve on the Council.” Realtor Mary Williams suggested that the City develop its own Facebook page, and jeweler Albert Yocom observed that if all the users of Facebook lived in a single geographic space, they would constitute the fourth largest nation in the world.
All of the references to cyberspace aside, what brought the Marceline residents to last night’s Chamber-sponsored town hall meeting in physical space was the fact there are 17 empty buildings in the city’s downtown, and the businesses that persist there are struggling. Yocom acknowledged the difficulty of keeping his doors open but had solutions to offer. “We need more businesses to build our tax base,” Yocum asserted, and referring to the 3/50 Project, he added, “If you just spend $50 a month among three of our businesses, what a difference you would make.” One of the assumptions being made by the founders of the 3/50 Project is that “for every $100 spent in locally owned independent stores, $68 returns to the community through taxes, payroll, and other expenditures.” The owner of Yocom Jewelry discouraged consumers from taking their business to out-of-town “corporate chains” as doing so deprives Marceline of the benefits of shopping locally. Similarly, meeting moderator and Chamber associate member Shane Cavanah dispelled the misconception that Marceline receives the benefit of sales tax revenue when its residents shop at Wal-Mart. The answer in the eyes of many Marceline business owners was to restrict shopping to their community and to increase the local population as well as the volume of sales they hoped would follow. Walsworth Publishing CEO Don Walsworth cited the lack of consumer traffic in Marceline’s business district and the City’s high utility rates as the two major drawbacks: “The Chamber could encourage those thinking about moving here. Thirty new families moved to Linn County in the past year, [but] you can’t have utility rates that are higher than a town 10 miles away.” Walsworth’s solutions were to “conserve energy, determine our strengths and weaknesses, and adopt an economy of scale by consolidating some services we already have.”
- See today's LCL for the full story
Last night, about a hundred Marceline residents assembled at the Walsworth Community Center to envision what the downtown business district of Disney’s boyhood home could become if they all worked together. While no one suggested that the Disneyland of Walt’s youth be abandoned, Marceline Chamber Vice-President Steve Long urged the gathering to “live in the present and prepare for the future.” Continuing that theme, Dr. Long reminded his listeners, “We now have a digital highway; you need to have a virtual business as well as one of brick and mortar.”
Marceline Mayor Bill Stuart echoed that sentiment from the audience when he suggested building a website that is positive and meaningful rather than critical and counterproductive. Stuart discounted the currency of print journalism in the eyes of youth, but there wasn’t a single representative of the 30-and-under crowd present to cheer him on. Presumably, they were too preoccupied wandering through the blogosphere to attend. “We’ve got to get some of our younger people here,” asserted Mayor Stuart. “We need them to participate, volunteer, serve on the Council.” Realtor Mary Williams suggested that the City develop its own Facebook page, and jeweler Albert Yocom observed that if all the users of Facebook lived in a single geographic space, they would constitute the fourth largest nation in the world.
All of the references to cyberspace aside, what brought the Marceline residents to last night’s Chamber-sponsored town hall meeting in physical space was the fact there are 17 empty buildings in the city’s downtown, and the businesses that persist there are struggling. Yocom acknowledged the difficulty of keeping his doors open but had solutions to offer. “We need more businesses to build our tax base,” Yocum asserted, and referring to the 3/50 Project, he added, “If you just spend $50 a month among three of our businesses, what a difference you would make.” One of the assumptions being made by the founders of the 3/50 Project is that “for every $100 spent in locally owned independent stores, $68 returns to the community through taxes, payroll, and other expenditures.” The owner of Yocom Jewelry discouraged consumers from taking their business to out-of-town “corporate chains” as doing so deprives Marceline of the benefits of shopping locally. Similarly, meeting moderator and Chamber associate member Shane Cavanah dispelled the misconception that Marceline receives the benefit of sales tax revenue when its residents shop at Wal-Mart. The answer in the eyes of many Marceline business owners was to restrict shopping to their community and to increase the local population as well as the volume of sales they hoped would follow. Walsworth Publishing CEO Don Walsworth cited the lack of consumer traffic in Marceline’s business district and the City’s high utility rates as the two major drawbacks: “The Chamber could encourage those thinking about moving here. Thirty new families moved to Linn County in the past year, [but] you can’t have utility rates that are higher than a town 10 miles away.” Walsworth’s solutions were to “conserve energy, determine our strengths and weaknesses, and adopt an economy of scale by consolidating some services we already have.”
- See today's LCL for the full story
