Beloit, WI vs. Wytheville, VA
Welcome to this first round match-up in the fifth annual Strongest Town Competition! In this round, 16 towns are facing off, and eight will advance to the next segment of the contest based on your votes. We invite you to read the answers that representatives from these two towns provided to questions about economic resilience, citizen involvement, land use and more, then vote for the strongest.
Can’t decide? If you’re looking for inspiration, check out how we describe the Strong Towns approach, or maybe take a look at the questions that make up our Strong Towns Strength Test.
You may vote once per day in each match-up.
Round 1 voting closes at 12pm CDT on Thursday, March 12st.
Note: All entries are lightly edited for clarity and readability.
Photo Credit: Creative Commons
BELOIT, WI
Entry submitted by: Shauna El-Amin, Crystal Cribbs, Stephanie Knueppel, Malinda Obershaw, Jessica Hernandez
What is your favorite thing about your town?
Beloit has been through so much in the last several decades, but our city has managed to be at the forefront of recruiting new businesses, working closely with developers, and highlighting all the great large and small businesses we have here. Our downtown is committed to continued revitalization and has been a Wisconsin Main Street Community for over 30 years. Beloit is a community where neighbors and customers are friends, and culture and art are accessible to all.
What is the biggest challenge your town faces, and what are you doing to address it?
Our community has faced backlash throughout the years as a bad crime, bad image, rough area city. But that cannot be further from the truth. While every community has some crime they aren't proud of, our community actually just has a bad image from outsiders. Those within the community take pride in it and show it every day with their countless community service hours and their #beloitpride mentality.
What transportation options exist in your town for people of varying ages, abilities, and means? How easy is it to live in your town without regular access to a car? What transportation investments has your town recently made or is it in the process of making?
We have a wonderful transportation system in our community that goes everywhere and is accessible to all. Our Beloit Transit System has three large daily routes as well as a daily route to Janesville, a community to our north.
Tell us about your community's local economy. Who are the key players, big and small, and how do they help your town to be financially strong and resilient? What local businesses are you most proud of?
Our community's economy is very strong. We are home to over 1,200 businesses, including the international headquarters for Kerry, Regal, and ABC Supply. All of these businesses help our community by sponsoring many initiatives and nonprofits. They help many organizations help others in our community when they are in need. We are very proud of all of our businesses, and we have a large number of small businesses we are thankful to have in our community.
If we took a walking tour through your town, what would we see? How does your community use its land productively to promote long-term financial resilience?
A walking tour in our community would allow you to see a wide variety of neighborhoods that are full of caring home owners, as well as building and business owners who take great pride in our appearance. A stroll in Downtown Beloit will help to elevate your mood with countless boutiques, restaurants, coffee shops and unique experiences. Our downtown is the heart of our community and creates a beautiful ambiance for community members and visitors alike.
How easy is it to become an entrepreneur or a small-scale developer in your town? What kinds of support are available for a resident who wants to open a business or build on a small vacant lot?
Our community is very supportive of small scale developers and welcomes them to come in to city hall to ask questions and utilize the expertise of others. We have a large entrepreneurial scene in Beloit, including a technology incubator, IronTek, which regularly holds entrepreneur classes and competitions.
At Strong Towns we believe that financial solvency is a prerequisite for long-term prosperity. What steps has your community taken to ensure its financial security? Do local leaders adequately do the math on new investments proposed in your town to ensure that they’ll be able to afford them now and afford their maintenance in the future?
Our City Manager has been a huge advocate for financial security in our city. With the help of the City Council, the city has managed to put itself in a great financial position and looks at each and every development to see what the community benefits would be along with the community costs.
At Strong Towns, we believe that local government is a platform for strong citizens to collaboratively build a prosperous place. How are residents in your town involved in shaping its future? How do residents’ experiences, struggles, and concerns directly inform the projects undertaken by local government? Provide one or more examples.
Our residents are involved in many committees, boards and commissions on the city level, and they are very vocal at council meetings and community listening sessions. The City Council allows for feedback at council meetings and regularly meets with citizens to hear their concerns.
Wytheville, VA
Entry submitted by: Todd Wolford
What is your favorite thing about your town?
My favorite thing about my town is our resources. We have access to so many great outdoor opportunities that promote a healthy quality of life for locals and visitors alike. We are a small town of around 8,000 residents. We have great proximity to bigger cities and destinations with Interstates 77 and 81 intersecting in our county. What I am starting to see with our current revitalization efforts are folks from the cities who want to come to our small town, and locals having to travel less for food and entertainment; we are making this happen right here at home with our investments in infrastructure and business recruitment tactics and incentives. I feel that more has happened in five years in Wytheville than in the past 30.
What is the biggest challenge your town faces, and what are you doing to address it?
I think one of the biggest challenges our town faces is that we sometimes need to get out of our own way. For quite some time, our town sat dormant with little growth happening. As mentioned, our community is now moving at a rapid pace to create change for our local residents and give our young people a chance to stay in Wytheville and not have to relocate after college. We need to do a better job at retaining that young demographic and focus more on technical education to fill our local industry jobs. We also need to create living environments for those recent graduates, so they can afford a house in our community and support our local tax base — rather than living in a surrounding county and commuting into Wytheville for employment. We are currently creating partnerships with local high school technology departments to prepare our youth for opportunities that support our local economy. Our focus and efforts on bringing life back to our main street through public and private investment, are stimulating more local jobs and small business entrepreneurship. https://www.brookings.edu/blog/the-avenue/2019/08/01/how-a-rural-virginian-town-is-using-entrepreneurship-to-boost-its-local-economy/
What transportation options exist in your town for people of varying ages, abilities, and means? How easy is it to live in your town without regular access to a car? What transportation investments has your town recently made or is it in the process of making?
We have public transportation in our town. This is primarily for patrons who are unable to drive or those who simply do not have vehicles. Our town is very walkable and, with our recently implemented HEAL (Healthy Eating Active Living) program, we are becoming even more walkable with initiatives focused on healthy eating and active living. We are transitioning ourselves to consciously plan for being a more bike-friendly community going forward too. We continue to create better access to public transportation and other options. Another emphasis is developing a transportation service that brings visitors from our outlying hotels to our newly renovated downtown. This is part of our effort to support small business sustainability.
Tell us about your community's local economy. Who are the key players, big and small, and how do they help your town to be financially strong and resilient? What local businesses are you most proud of?
We feel we have a fairly strong local economy, supported by several big players in the industry sector, including Gatorade and Pepsico. Being on the I-81 and I-77 corridor, with easy access to major metropolitan areas in a six-hour span, we have room to grow our industry sector too. We have many chain restaurants with the opportunity to grow, with competitive incentive packages in place for recruitment.
Our main focus for continued economic growth is with small businesses who directly contribute to the local community and economy. We emphasize aid and help for these businesses to grow sustainably into the future. We just implemented a small business competition to generate businesses in our downtown business district. Our community was one of four in Virginia to be awarded this grant money. From this competition we generated two full-scale breweries, a small Vietnamese cafe, and an art school expansion. The $70,000 total grant money awarded by the state was leveraged by a total private investment from those new businesses of over $3.5 million.
If we took a walking tour through your town, what would we see? How does your community use its land productively to promote long-term financial resilience?
The first thing that comes to mind would be history. We do a great job locally at promoting our culture and history, and we have many pictures and historical artifacts. As we have a good tourist base, we feel this is important to celebrate and promote so others will tell our story for us.
If you haven't been to our town in the last three years, you would see a completely renovated and revitalized Downtown Main Street. It has spawned many new businesses and spurs locals and visitors alike to walk our streets, and things just feel alive again. Along with the infrastructure and beautification improvements, you would notice historic buildings, murals, and many experience pieces only unique downtowns can provide.
Lastly, you would see community and everything that word encompasses.
How easy is it to become an entrepreneur or a small-scale developer in your town? What kinds of support are available for a resident who wants to open a business or build on a small vacant lot?
As seen in the Brookings article mentioned above, we feel we are an example of what "business friendly" means. We have many opportunities to educate, recruit, and sustain local businesses and entrepreneurs. We work with local financial institutions and granting agencies, a strong partnership with local government helps create and implement incentives that aid businesses and entrepreneurs in living out their dream. The same goes for small-scale developers. We have solicited input from local investors and developers. Based on the information received, we have been able to create local incentives and local tax breaks for new and expanding development in our town. We have found that incentives on the front end help with long term investment for our community’s future.
At Strong Towns we believe that financial solvency is a prerequisite for long-term prosperity. What steps has your community taken to ensure its financial security? Do local leaders adequately do the math on new investments proposed in your town to ensure that they’ll be able to afford them now and afford their maintenance in the future?
Our community has gone a great deal of time without investing heavily into our community through infrastructure or big-scale projects. Our local government and town council recently invested $4 million in public tax payers dollars into a downtown streetscape project with much scrutiny from the public. The vision on the front end is what has now generated more than $7 million dollars of private investment to that very district. The return on investment is always taken into consideration when making decisions and spending tax payer dollars. Our community has a great local restaurant and lodging tax base that allow us to take make big decisions that will positively impact our community. Sometimes these projects and expenditures are an investment to improve the quality of life for our residents, and sometimes they are revenue generating opportunities for the foreseeable future.
At Strong Towns, we believe that local government is a platform for strong citizens to collaboratively build a prosperous place. How are residents in your town involved in shaping its future? How do residents’ experiences, struggles, and concerns directly inform the projects undertaken by local government? Provide one or more examples.
A great example is the walkability of our community. We realized we had sidewalks leading to nowhere and paths that needed sidewalks for connectivity to key destinations. We have created a master plan, taking into consideration the adjoining neighborhoods and the walkability of downtown shopping and dining. This has also been emphasized through the HEAL Initiative, which our mayor implemented.
Another example would be around meal scarcity. A portion of our local population and the surrounding population doesn't always have a meal for breakfast, lunch, or dinner. We now have a pay-what-you-can, full-scale restaurant in the heart of our newly renovated downtown. It is a collaboration between local government, local nonprofits, and state and federal grant funds. The Open Door Cafe represents "everyone eats wythe us." We see people from many demographics all eating at the same time and at the same location, and it creates a sense of place for people to gather and feel comfortable. It also gives those folks needing a free meal an opportunity to volunteer for that meal and to be a part of the community in a positive way.
Round 1 Match-Ups
Highland Park, IL vs. Victoria, BC | Beloit, WI vs. Wytheville, VA | Abingdon, VA vs. Sylvania, OH | Chubbuck, ID vs. Winona, MN
The other eight nominees will be revealed on Tuesday, March 10.