Bottom-Up Shorts: How Local Pride Can Strengthen a Town
Hannah Rechtschaffen is the director of the Greenfield Business Association in Greenfield, Massachusetts. She joins Norm on this episode of Bottom-Up Shorts to discuss the unique challenges and opportunities that Greenfield faces and how it’s becoming a stronger town.
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Norm Van Eeden Petersman 0:01
Welcome to bottom up shorts. I'm Norm with strong towns, and after meeting 1000s of members, I often think I've got to tell you about this person who is working to change their community in really interesting ways. And that's what bottom up shorts is about, quick introductions to regular people doing exciting things. They're not superheroes. They once felt like you might unsure if they could make a difference. And today, my guest is Hannah rexhafen, director of the Greenfield Business Association in Greenfield, Massachusetts. Hannah is part of a team that has nominated Greenfield as a contestant in this year's strongest town contest. She and her community are excited to showcase the hard work happening on the ground to make Greenfield a more resilient, thriving place. I'm so glad that Hannah shared this moment with us, and I'm excited to introduce her to you and so enjoy the episode.
Hannah Rechtschaffen 0:51
So we do. We have an independent paper here that covers a lot of our local region, called the Greenfield recorder, and the my turn section, like my turn to speak session, any resident can send something into the paper and hope that it gets a little bit of air time, as it were. And so Andrew varnon, who's a resident here in Greenfield, who's the one who really spearheaded this nomination for strong towns, which we're so grateful that he did, he wrote a my turn after having a conversation with some friends, and these friends lived all over the place. He's originally from Florida, so a lot of them are still in Florida and in other places in the US. And they were, you know, like you do, sitting on the phone one night, everyone just started chatting and being like, man, you know, I wish I lived in a town that had this, or I wish that I lived in a town that was more like this, more walkable, more community oriented, more local stuff. And as he was sitting there, he was like, Wait, that's my town. Like, I live in that town. And so he wrote in my turn about how easy it is to forget, sometimes to look inward at where you are and wonder if it has a lot of the things that people want. And as he did this inventory, a little bit it did. And so, you know, I think Greenfield, we're a classic New England mill town, right? We've been through a lot of ups and downs. One of the things that I love about this strongest town contest is that they really emphasize that this is not a perfect town contest, right? This is not like we've got everything together. We've nailed it. Look at us. It's very much about we are in process all the time, resiliency moving forward, pulling things together, right? And when I think of Greenfield in particular, we really emulate that energy. We are a community of people. I mean, I could sit here and just list off people that I work with every day who everything from residents to, you know, the head of the library, the head of the community college, folks at the capital C city, business owners, farmers, artists, who, every day, they come together to just do their part of something. I think we do that really well here, where it's like, this is my corner of this, and I'm gonna work away at it and have it be awesome. And then when we step back and look at the whole it really paints a picture of what community effort is all about. So I could go on and on about that, but I'm sure I've like more than answered your question. Hopefully I answered it at all, but I have so much I can say about that. Well,
Norm Van Eeden Petersman 3:26
I love that, because it just brings to mind the idea that we talk about a strong town. Said every every community needs strong citizens, people that really take ownership of their community and that citizenship is very little has very little to do with paperwork and everything to do about that sense of being invested in a place and seeking its prosperity, not only for personal prosperity, but also to be able to ensure that everyone gets to live a good life in a prospering place. And your role with the Greenfield Business Association is to work alongside a lot of businesses or provide maybe an encouraging sort of hand on the shoulder, sometimes to be like, Hey, we can pull through this. What does that look like as you work at the local level?
Hannah Rechtschaffen 4:04
That's a great question. So for me, my background is in arts based economic development, which I think is particularly helpful because I really define business with a very, very broad brush. So you know, we've got our micro businesses here. Those are artists. Those are startup entrepreneurs. Those are folks who are selling things at the farmers market all the way through up to some big industrial So from a business standpoint, every day, I'm working with different business owners and managers and operators, nonprofit sector, for profit sector, municipal government, you know, small retail. One of the things that we have a lot of here in Greenfield are multi generational family businesses that have been around for a long time, which any of my folks out there who have worked in the family business arena know that is a very particular call. Sure, right? And you gotta really know how to step into that. And then also a lot of local retail. We have an incredible food system here. Our agricultural community is unbelievable. This county is the third largest agricultural producer in the state, I believe, or something like that. You can cut that out, if that's not right, you know. But we, we have something like 800 plus farms right here in Franklin County, which Greenfield is the county seat of and so business looks different every day. We are up against so many different challenges. I don't have to enumerate them here. I'm sure it comes up in every single podcast. One of the things that I think makes Greenfield especially strong is that we have folks who are dedicated to maintaining the localism of their life. So they are willing to shop local. Sometimes that's not affordable to everyone. So for folks for whom it's affordable for they make a point to do it. It's an activism of sorts. We have a lot of local art to consume, and people show up for things. We have an independent movie theater here. We have our own internet service here. So it really, you know, it becomes a point of pride, I think, for people to say, yes, there are big challenges from Amazon and such, but at a certain point, we decide that we want business to look local, and we're going to support organizations like the business association so that they can, in turn, support our business community and be there for them, whether it's, you know, funding opportunities, partnership opportunities, finding a New space to grow into all of those elements.
Norm Van Eeden Petersman 6:42
Yeah, wow. It brings to mind a an experience that really jarred me last year, when I went to a community in Texas to be a keynote speaker for their Small Business Symposium that they were hosting and the year. So I was there to give the strong town skirt side chat and talk about, like, local bottom up change and really cultivating the new sort of emergent ecosystem that every community needs to really be tending to. And I learned that the previous year's keynote presenter had shared on how to make their community franchise ready along their highway corridor. And it just struck me the two different worlds being described there. And Greenfield is somewhat famous, and actually has been memorialized in a movie about resisting the introduction of Walmart within the community. How maybe has that shaped not just the specific sort of land use decisions that are made, but maybe more about the culture and the ethos within the place, which, on the one hand, had people that said, we need to get with the times and just allow this to happen, and others that were very cautious about this and maybe stood back from the Yeah, did, didn't want to see this go through? Yes,
Hannah Rechtschaffen 7:48
that's such a great question. I'm super proud of Greenfield for, you know, our notoriety around this topic and what I always say, because, you know, certainly at the Business Association, we have corporate businesses here in Greenfield. One of the things that came out of the decision to not allow Walmart in is that we have a limited footprint that businesses are allowed to develop within that many corporate businesses are not willing to consider because it's too small for their corporate model. And so the corporate businesses that we have here are the ones that decided to, you know, open a store that is maybe slightly smaller than they would be in another location, but they were willing to fit into the fabric. And I think that really right there is one of the keys that people, even in Greenfield, don't give themselves enough credit for which, especially now we're seeing this on a national scale, right? Which is people power. We don't have to when we're looking at development questions, we don't have to simply throw the doors open and say, Well, we're the little guy, you're the big guy. Do whatever, right? When it comes to Walmart, it's what I always say to people when it comes to Walmart. I'm thrilled that we don't have a Walmart here, not only because of their particular business model and development model, which I won't talk smack about. People can look it up. I don't want them here because they don't treat their employees well, right? Yeah, right. That's not true of every corporation. And there are a lot of corporations that have worked hard to, as you say, meet the times and take care of their people and show up for their people. And so I think, rather than this sense of throwing the baby out with the bathwater. What Greenfield did is say we are not open to this, but if you're willing to consider this, we are willing to consider you, and that is what I would really encourage communities to say, is, you know, we're we have certain values that we're not willing to. Compromise on and that doesn't mean that we're not with the times, and it doesn't mean that we can't still develop, but it does mean that we are looking for something and some compromise and cooperation in what that development looks like. And yes, you're going to miss out on opportunities that way. And yes, we in Greenfield have had our own sort of struggles since that decision to grow our business community in certain ways, and at the same time, we stuck to our values, and I do think that that is important. So my job, a big part of my job, is figuring out how to fit into this more modern structure where corporations are part of the business ecosystem and figure out how to move the needle on our own economic development security without sort of transgressing on stances we took in the past. And I'll give an example of this, right? So we have a brand new Starbucks opening this week down in what is the rotary section of town. So right here where I am in my office, we're right downtown in our beautiful, historic New England downtown, and if you go just a little bit towards the highway, you get to more of those corporate entities, right? And so Starbucks is coming in, and that, in and of itself, was a contentious thing. People had a lot of feelings about it. To me, I'm excited that Starbucks is coming in, because Starbucks is customers, by and large, and I'm generalizing are the kinds of customers who have the disposable income and the time to explore nice, historic New England downtown. So if they pop off the highway on their way to skiing in Vermont, and there's a big billboard that says, Greenfield downtown, you know, half a mile that way, there are many people who might say, Oh, I'll take a little detour for that, and that is a valuable part of the ecosystem. So my end goal is still that localism. It's still to get people shopping local retail. But it doesn't mean that it's either or those two things are connected. If we do our way finding, right? If we make it cute, if we let someone know where they are and what they're close to, they can take advantage of it. So that's how that ecosystem works for me. Yeah, and
Norm Van Eeden Petersman 12:27
those are those moments where just taking care of the small details, the way finding the very sort of focused efforts to say, you know, where, what are the networks, and what are the pathways that people are regularly taking, and really, you know, giving attention to those things, rather than just saying, like, what's the next biggest thing? It's always what is the next smallest thing that we can do to improve our community? I We, I joked before we started that Hannah, you and I could do a local economics talk podcast ourselves. But let's wrap up just on the question that I love to ask each of our guests, which is, what is the thing that energizes you and gives you hope in your community? Oh,
Hannah Rechtschaffen 13:03
man. So you know, a lot of folks out there in my business community have heard me say this before, but I'll say it here, since I'm in front of a broader audience, one of the things that really energizes me, you know, I've done economic development work in a lot of places at this point in my career, I used to live in Asheville, North Carolina. I've lived in Philadelphia, you know. And one of the things about Greenfield that blew me away when I came into this position is how many pieces of the puzzled are sort of usual place making economic development puzzle. How many pieces were already here when I got here. And so, you know, I really see my role very much as a connector. I connect people with each other, I connect opportunities, I connect people with space or grants, or whatever it is. And so when it comes to having these big pieces of the puzzle in place, and all I have to do is kind of connect something, either make something more visible, market it more broadly, tell the story a little bit differently or a little bit better. That makes my job really, really fun. I won't say it makes it easy, but it definitely just sort of puts it right in my wheelhouse. And so I, you know, Greenfield has so much to recommend it, and so many things in our history and in our current ecosystem that I love telling people about, because I literally spend all day. And I'm not even exaggerating, I spend all day, or at least once a day, I say something to someone about our history or about what we have here, and I just see them get really excited. I see the light bulb go off, and they're like, Oh, I didn't even know we had that. And I'll give an example, right? Because this is my favorite example. A lot of people don't know that the modern. Hive was invented in Greenfield. It was invented, right? It was invented here by a gentleman named Lorenzo Langstroth, awesome name, first of all, and he invented what we picture, that modern White drawer bee hive, right? That's used in agriculture all over the world. So that, to me, is such an example of the agricultural entrepreneurship that we have, not only in Greenfield but in Franklin County and in New England. And for it to have come from here, especially at this moment when the bees and their role in the ecosystem is really can't be overstated. When I tell people that, especially people who have lived here for a long time and they don't know that I just see this like little spark of pride that they're like, oh, that that's actually really cool. And so as a result of that, we have these amazing bee sculptures. We have a bee fest. We have all these fun things. And so right now, as we approach the be fest, the 15th annual be Fest in May. My job is just to amplify that. Who doesn't know about that yet? Who can we invite up here to celebrate that with us? How do we reach more people with that opportunity and that, that really fun point of history? So so much of my job is just highlighting a lot of what we have here and what makes us strong. And that's why I was excited by this nomination, because it gives us an opportunity to just kind of like, you know, a little humble brag, as my friend would say, it's it's just saying we have such incredible stuff going on here, from independent solar companies to independent media, to all of our local businesses. I just I get excited to share it.
Norm Van Eeden Petersman 16:48
Yes, I am excited. Also, just as we wrap up that Greenfield is in the strongest town contest and head to strongest town contest.com. If the voting is still open at the time that this episode airs, you can certainly do that. Otherwise, just read up about Greenfield. Read up about some of the other places. And if you're passing through the Greenfield, Massachusetts area, make sure to drive on in. Hit up the downtown community. Enjoy the many things that it has to offer. Maybe even one day, go move there, because it sounds pretty amazing. So good to connect with you. And as always, I hope that you are inspired just to be able to continue to share this. I can sense that energy that comes from you, but also for the folks that are listening do continue to take note of those small things that bring energy to your community. And as always, take care and take care of your places.
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