How Brainerd’s New Ice Machine Exposes Community Apathy and Decline
The week of the Fourth of July, 2024, marked the grand opening of my city’s latest commercial investment — an ice dispensing machine. We’re very proud of it here in Brainerd, Minnesota. Not only can we now buy ice in bulk from a machine instead of, say, the far more burdensome method of getting it from a cooler at one of the many gas stations or grocery stores, but the automated machine also has all kinds of neat features.
For example, as highlighted in this article by the managing editor of our local newspaper, the machine has a camera that lets the owner — who lives in a neighboring state — monitor this location along with the dozens of similar machines he owns in other places. In a high-tech twist that is sure to razzle-dazzle the locals, the owner can even “speak to customers via the speakers.” The mind reels.
I joke, but I do so only as a coping mechanism. This entire thing makes me really, really sad.
I was on the city’s planning commission when this was approved. At the time, I called it a “case study in neighborhood decline.” My colleagues who voted for this debasement of our community made sure to check all the boxes of our unsophisticated zoning code. You’ll note the presence of "screening," the jargon term planning officials use to describe the token shrubs and ornamental trees that we pretend will someday hide this abomination from view.
At the same meeting, the chair of our planning commission fatalistically remarked that, while he didn’t want to see a failed restaurant torn down and replaced with this ice machine, “that’s capitalism.”
I’m sad that our narrow view of capitalism fails to acknowledge how the city’s policies and actions have devalued this neighborhood, robbing our local property owners and entrepreneurs of their capital while priming the entire corridor for exploitation by bottom-feeding outside capital. I’m sad at how dogmatic this belief is, even in the face of all the harm it does to our neighborhoods.
It makes me sad that some in my community will look at this as success. This ice machine creates no jobs. It does not improve the tax base. It isn’t something that will make neighboring properties more desirable (even with our pathetic suburban screening requirements). It will not appreciate in value over time. Yes, it replaced a business that had failed, but let’s be clear about how failure is going to happen now: This ice machine will operate until it falls into disrepair, at which time the owner will let it go tax forfeit. That’s capitalism!
I’m sad that we did this to ourselves. We had a chance to fix the street, turning it back from a state highway focused on moving cars quickly to a local street designed to build wealth and value. We had a chance to rebuild the local streets around this site, making this location and its struggling restaurant part of the neighborhood fabric and not merely a barnacle on a stroad with declining traffic volumes. We had a chance to reform our zoning regulations, allowing the mix of uses and incremental development that this historical neighborhood was designed to thrive with.
We missed these opportunities and more. We continue to pass on them. It makes me sad.
And I’m sad about how powerless we seem to feel in the face of this exploitation. The installation of this ice machine did not spark outrage or debate. If anything, it was met with indifference. Outside of the newspaper article awkwardly celebrating the technology, we seem to accept that decline is our lot in life. That we literally can’t have nice things. That we should celebrate our ice machine and marvel at its low-tech camera and speaker like the simple, impoverished rubes we are.
The median household income in the city of Brainerd is $46,933. That is 30% lower than the neighboring suburban city of Baxter at $67,064. For many, these numbers are all the proof they need that Baxter should get the new medical center while we should be grateful for an ice machine.
To me, it signals the opposite. Brainerd is full of potential; it's full of entrepreneurial people ready to go to work. My family and our neighbors, along with nearly 14,000 others, have already chosen to invest in this community — we don’t have to be convinced. We’re just waiting for the city to stop looking outward at what others are doing and start looking inward at what we can do.
Brainerd’s downtown is the most productive land in the entire region, with a higher value per acre than anything on Baxter’s suburban strip. The downtown would generate even more wealth if we didn’t surround it with highways that cut it off from the local population — customers who live within easy walking distance. Let’s do what we can to close those gaps.
Our neighborhoods have the historical design pattern that builds wealth and prosperity: a nice grid with blocks just the right length. Let’s fix our zoning regulations so that our neighborhoods can thicken up over time, providing both opportunity and wealth creation for our residents. We may need to bring in someone to help us with this work and train our staff instead of merely reworking our ill-conceived suburban codes to be slightly less, um…suburban.
The neighborhood around the new ice machine has been particularly abused by the city’s approach to street engineering. Let’s take the materials we have on hand and make those neighborhoods safer for biking and walking; let's make them less of a shortcut for people looking to get out of town quickly. And, again, if we’re going to give these projects to our engineering department instead of to a design team, let’s train our staff on the elements of placemaking and wealth creation instead of merely traffic flow.
Brainerd is the ideal community for implementing the four-step process for public investment. Let the neighboring communities spend dumb money on the large, negative-returning investments. We can spend pennies on the dollar doing the little things, build tons of wealth within our neighborhoods, and give our residents and businesses more prosperity and a higher quality of life.
If we just stopped hurting ourselves, if we stopped trying to be a poor version of a suburb and instead leaned into our strengths, Brainerd would explode in wealth and opportunity.
The new ice machine might seem like a simple convenience to some, nothing more than a place to grab a bag of ice on a hot day. It might be some people’s version of capitalism, the merciless outcome of a market system where we are called to play the role of uncompetitive losers. To others, it’s just another step in the embedded decline we have experienced for decades.
To me, however, this ice machine is a profoundly sad symbol of deeper issues within our community. It speaks volumes about how little we care about ourselves, how low our expectations have become and how we are complicit in our own decline. It makes me sad because I love this place and I know we can do better.
Charles Marohn (known as “Chuck” to friends and colleagues) is the founder and president of Strong Towns and the bestselling author of “Escaping the Housing Trap: The Strong Towns Response to the Housing Crisis.” With decades of experience as a land use planner and civil engineer, Marohn is on a mission to help cities and towns become stronger and more prosperous. He spreads the Strong Towns message through in-person presentations, the Strong Towns Podcast, and his books and articles. In recognition of his efforts and impact, Planetizen named him one of the 15 Most Influential Urbanists of all time in 2017 and 2023.