Three PILOT towns were selected in 1977 by the National Trust for Historic Preservation to test a premise: Historic Preservation is Economic Development. After demonstrating success, the National Main Street Center was established in 1980 to formalize the teaching process, and since then, has helped over 2000 communities restore economic vitality to their historic downtown districts.

The Main Street Approach is based on utilizing local assets, building a sense of place, identifying unique market characteristics, and can be tailored to a variety of situations using a practical adaptable framework of transformation strategies.

The Main Street Four Point Approach adapted to Industrial Park Development

• Organization: Create a foundation for asset based sustainable development, including unique funding partnerships and broad based community involvement
• Promotion: Position the development project as a community hub of innovation, tech transfer based economic development, and lifestyle support services
• Design: Build a sense of place that attracts people to work, live and visit extending the activity beyond the industrial park to include surrounding neighborhoods
• Economic Vitality: Develop an integrated collaborative collection of businesses that satisfy market needs and provide living wage jobs from technical to professional

GreenG Network will encourage every development project to consider these ideas:

• clean distributed energy systems to power the industrial park and provide next generation energy to surrounding neighborhoods via independent electrical grids
• community food hubs that combines aspects of farmers markets with local production of food in a “field to market” and “field to school” delivery model
• employer assisted housing finance models to provide enhanced next generation communities surrounding the industrial park
• workforce development programs that start in the primary and secondary education system and continue to communities of creative entrepreneurs

If you are interested in learning more, schedule a call. We love to talk about this.

For all that the American economy has going for it, supply chains are at risk from foreign dependency. Throughout history, countries that have had the ability to explore the world have sought out cheap land, cheap labor, new sources of raw material, and secure trade routes to build economic power. These countries also engaged their military to protect their interests. With more economic power, these countries were able to exert their influence in areas far from their homeland.

After WW2, longstanding colonial relationships based in Europe were dissolved and reorganized into independent governments with new suitors from the remaining superpowers eager to invest in creating new economically driven relationships.

As the corporate world became increasingly globalized, national borders became less important, and sourcing raw materials, labor and production facilities was driven more on economics than national security interests. This reorganization has created a new economic world order where power is now with countries that have more manufacturing capacity and sources of essential raw materials.

GreenG has been in discussions with officials when this current state of the world has been expressed, “We (the U.S.) need to be concerned that the weapons that we seek to develop to protect our national security interests are made with raw materials controlled and supplied by the country(s) we may be fighting…”

Every year, the Department of Defense presents its annual industrial capacity report to Congress. In recent years, these reports have consistently expressed the need to focus efforts and investment into “reshoring” production capabilities.

Examples of “reshoring” include:

• locating domestic sources for critical raw materials that are needed for the manufacturing of components;
• investing in workforce development programs that engage in training new manufacturing skills;
• building the manufacturing, engineering, and R&D infrastructure, modernizing defense acquisition procedures; and
• exercising the DoD’s role as customer, investor, regulator and partner with private industry.

GreenG Network is dedicated to promoting an economic development strategy of regional tech centers located in communities of need, both rural and urban, where the needs of the workers and surrounding communities will be addressed. When fully developed, these regional tech centers will be a community hub.

GreenG Network believes that building resilient supply chains is a national security issue and deserves a WW2 War Bond type funding effort.

Are you ready for change?

In the classic movie, “Back to the Future”, Marty McFly and his girlfriend Jennifer are sitting on a bench in the town square of Mill Valley discussing how they were going to go on a weekend trip after Marty’s dad George had wrecked the family car.

Just before they started to kiss, an older lady approached them and said, “Save the Clock Tower!” She followed up that proclamation with a flyer that described efforts to save and restore the historic clock tower that was part of the first town hall, built back in 1885 (as we learned in BTF 3).

The older lady was a community organizer attempting to recruit followers. But like with many efforts, Marty and Jennifer were not motivated to join in immediately. Anything worth pursuing takes time.

Jennifer took the flyer, wrote “I Love You” on the back, then gave it to Marty. That’s why Marty still had the flyer when he ended up at Doc Brown’s house when he travelled back to 1955. Remember? “But we never know when lightning will strike.”

During my days with the Main Street Program, my colleagues talked about how their local programs started. Quite a few Main Street programs started as a result of community organized efforts to save historic structures from demolition. “Save the Clock Tower” was a rallying cry to join the group and get something done.

What is your rallying cry?

Is your message strong enough to get people motivated to learn more?

Then after that, do you have a plan to actually get something done to answer that rallying cry?

This is a “chicken and egg” scenario. You don’t need to have a plan in place to recruit people to help you accomplish your goals. It’s more important for you to have the passion to invest the effort into the process of creating the plan. Group visioning requires some patience as sometimes the process can feel like it is bogging down. After all, as with most teams, the players come from different backgrounds, with different skill sets and motivations. These differences come out when the group is together discussing ways to address the rallying cry.

Leading the group is like organizing a greyhound race. As the dogs are brought out of the paddock onto the track for introduction, they all look different. Their trainers take special care to keep the dogs separated before the race. The dogs are loaded into their individual starting boxes. The mechanical rabbit starts to come around the track. The dogs start scratching at the bottom of their box in anticipation of the door opening so they can chase the rabbit. When the door opens, it is at this precise moment when the dogs are truly organized in a group effort to catch the rabbit. The dogs work like crazy to catch the rabbit, as they have been trained to do. After the race is concluded, the dogs have nothing to chase, and if the trainers don’t get to their dogs in time, the dogs will realize that they are different and start to scrap.

With a common goal, people from different backgrounds can come together to work like a team to accomplish great things. When you have people from different backgrounds working together to solve a group problem, the plan for change that emerges from this group effort is stronger, and has facets and features that will motivate the diverse group to keep pushing forward when the going gets tough.

The challenge is to keep the group engaged. Make the goal worth pursuing. Provide benchmarks along the way to provide reinforcement and reward success. As the group reaches the benchmarks, keep the group focused on the big picture, and be ready to pursue the next benchmark.

Community change is hard. It is complicated. But when successful, nothing is more rewarding. Imagine how proud you will be when you accomplish your goal.