IDEAS NUMBERED 32-44

32 A Hard Sell Website for Every Single Town no Matter the Size Selling Quality of Life for Potential Residences
This can be everything from free houses, free taxes for 10 years to people who move with kids, this can be some other benefit. The ultimate residence incentives. People are moving to small towns in other parts of the country. Why not North Dakota?

33 A North Dakota “Tourism” Blitz
Ambassador people attend Sports Shows, Outdoors Shows, Gun Shows, State Fairs, Large County Fairs, and hundreds of other venues. The cost of attending a show with lodging for a party of 2 is about $500 for Lodging, $250 for Food and Entertainment, $300 for Travel (Small Travel Van), and $1000 average for booth and distribution materials and $50 amortized over the life of the booth for a competent Display. That’s $2200 per Show. If there were average of 3 shows per month and 2 People working the shows full time @ $35,000 per year each, means a total of $70,000 for salaries and about $80,000 for the other costs mentioned above. The selling of Sportsman’s Nirvana.

That totals $150,000. If those people were giving away free fishing, or hunting licenses or free lodging or some other free thing you can bet they would be generating a level of activity. It wouldn’t take long to get that money back in direct and indirect revenues. If just 50 licenses were given away or raffled off how much activity and what kind of tourism mail or email list would that generate? No One comes alone, that license will always bring another visitor along.

34 The Shrine to Lawrence Welk as an Example
North Dakota has at least a hundred recognizable and famous people to enshrine in small towns of the Dakota Prairie. I won’t list them, but where was Peggy Lee Born (the house)? What about Eric Severide? Each small town that can boast a visit, residence, or birth of a famous person should create a shrine to them. Build it and they will come. Roger Maris and Teddy Roosevelt aren’t enough. Celebrate them all. It builds pride and offers tourists something to remember.

35 Crops That Do Well in Dakota
Winter Squash, Red Beets (Pickled Beets), Chokecherry and Bush Cherry, Dill Pickles, Juneberry. All these are but a few of things which grow better in North Dakota than many places because of it’s hot dry weather. There are products which come from these which can be offered to a wider market. They are under produced.

36 Attraction Guides and Access Cards
Every County, Town and Village that has a Golf Course, City Park, RV Camp, and any other attraction of any kind should be well marked. In the case of RV camps and Golf Courses, sell an access card to allow people to play the course or camp their trailer without extra costs. As a person drives down the highways, attractive brown attractions signs to point visitors to these things.

37 Sales Tax Abatement for Towns under 500 and Companies with sales under $500,000.
Make a loophole for business owners to take advantage of. No sales tax for any small business in any small town. This single incentive might just cause an entrepreneur to relocate there or better for a company to put a store there who might not have otherwise. The amount of money the sales tax division would lose is very small. The benefits are great.

38 The Lilac Town, The Viburnum Town, The Grapevine Town, The Rose Town
Every medium sized town from 500-3000 can get it’s residents to get on board and grow at least one of a selected landscape horticultural species. There are for instance 250 different Lilacs which grow in ND, 80 different Viburnums, 40 different types of Cherries and Plums, 150 different roses, 30 different Grapevine types etc. Make it a community which specializes in ONE species. In Illinois the city of Lombard IL is called the Lilac City. Thousands of Lilacs of all different kinds bloom on streets, in parks and on medians during the lilac festival. I don’t think it’s too hard to imagine that North Dakota cities could do the same thing. It becomes a reason for someone to travel somewhere and see the sights when they are in full glory.

39 Universal Access for Every Navigable Waterway
North Dakota has lots of small streams and rivers without access for canoes, small boats etc. Make every stream, creek, lake no matter where accessible for public use. Only by sharing these precious few assets on a more universal scale can we expect to attract and keep visitors and residences. These access locations should be well marked.

40 Create Houses of Life
North Dakotans teach and train what they know in life skills to those who have not had the breaks in life. Some are inner city kids, some are prisoners just out of jail, some are people down on their luck. Do this as a business. Do this as a ministry. This is about teaching people to survive and prosper. Some of these “customers” will stay and some will be come good citizens as the move back into society. Right now there are few opportunities for troubled kids. This is a faith based initiative.

41 Health Spa
There are warm flowing artesian wells going to waste in ND. I know of several where the water comes out at 80 degrees and runs down the stream. Capture this water, house it, sanded pond with an outlet on the back side. A hot healing spring. Better if it has sulfur smell. People believe in the healing qualities of such “Springs”. It wont take long to field a few testimonials. Cover it in winter. Make it a destination. The Pool of Siloam in ND.

42 Window Dresser
No store window should ever be empty in ND. Always be selling something, the history of the area, Attractions, anything.

A Development Pattern for Farm Village Development

IDEA'S 26-31
There are hundreds of little towns and villages (hamlets) scattered all across Dakota. I am dealing with those of 100 or less. Everyone has written them off. They have no future. No one will ever move there. They will become farmland someday. Good riddance. That’s the attitude in any case.

I’m not convinced. I propose a solution that has potential, doesn’t cost much, and has the possibility of creating a desirable quality of life for people who live there or choose to move there. The attraction in living in these hamlets is the remoteness of them without being totally disconnected from any other people.
There are Texas Towns that have made this work. In France and Germany there are many rural villages which are part town part farm clusters.

They allow a mix of rural and city living in a unique way. I won’t call them by name but if you consult your North Dakota map you will quickly recognize which ones I mean. I am visualizing several as a conglomerate in making these recommendations. Have them in mind? Good. From here on out I’ll call this fictitious town of our new design Hamlet.

First 26
Recognize that hamlet is windswept. The wind blows across the prairie without mercy in winter, spring, summer and fall. Since Hamlet is small in area surrounding it with a robust shelterbelt and filling in the middle with aggressive tree plantings will stop the wind for good. In spring it’ll be a gentle breeze inside when it’s 50 mph outside, when a blizzard roars it’ll be a soft snowfall, when the summers hot dry dusty winds kick up it’ll be pleasantly breezy inside. I have lived in ND inside just such a treed shelter belted conclave. It was always pleasant. Sometimes I hated to leave the protected area when the wind was blowing as it often does in Dakota. This is the first step in improving livability.

Second 27
Create 10-acre farm sites around the Hamlet. They each boast 500 feet frontage that abuts the shelterbelt on the outside and 900 feet deep. Access is by a road cut thru the shelterbelt off a ring road that circles Hamlet along the shelterbelt. This acreage is large enough to have a few horses, or an orchard or grow some vegetables. This will attract hobby farmers who want to live in the country but not too far out. If a hamlet occupies about 100 acres including this new shelterbelt system it will mean roughly 20 of these hobby farm setups. I am assuming that someone prepared to own and “operate” one of these hobby farms will have outside income or savings of their own to do so. They “buy” these farmettes on a contract for deed. There are strings attached. They must maintain the shelterbelt in the front of their property. They must maintain the road in and out. They must occupy the land with a home of some kind or their primary residence must be in the Hamlet. They cannot be an absentee owner. No restrictions on who can buy these, in state or out of state. There is a restriction on how and when it can be sold. No consolidation allowed, no liquidation to a neighboring farmer. You can surrender it but when you took out the contract for deed you agreed to a certain set of restrictions. You also cannot pay it off ahead of time. You can deposit the money and stop the interest but you do not take full legal possession until the contract is complete. This is designed for people who are going to come and live in Hamlet.

There will be other limitations, codes and controls, which will maintain control on what the people buying this property, can and can’t do. We are building community here. If this worked well it would double the population of Hamlet.

Third 28
Any unoccupied house in Hamlet must be offered to a national market if it is not sold in the first year. In fact it might even be good if that home was GIVEN to someone who would move to Hamlet with children. If there are unoccupied lots in Hamlet suitable for building they must first be offered locally and then perhaps GIVEN to people who would move to Hamlet and build a house and live there.
An internet auction site (like EBAY) could be used to market these homes to the highest bidder. The point of this is to attract people to move to Hamlet by offering inexpensive housing. This has been tried other places nationally and with good success. Why not in North Dakota. It only fails if we do not try.

Fourth 29
Aggressive drainage management will be needed. Because flooding often can happen when development of this type is undertaken it is critical to plan surface storage and dispersal of all storm waters, melt and other water management issues. As part of this, one lot or pair of lots in the lowest area topographically of the town (two if needed) to be excavated with a slow slope. If practical a natural grass ditch draining the pond to an outside of town ditch would be best. If that’s not possible bury an underground 10” tile line running to an out of town lower drainage area. Then all storm drainage and any other would be funneled to this retention pond. Best if it were big enough to be ornamental as well. Call it a lake if you want the panache. But in any case create this water interest with an outlet above or underground. Do not drain off the bottom. The best would be if it were 4’ deep at stasis. This makes a nice community skating rink in winter. It could be artificially stocked with fish in summer for little kids and to keep the mosquitoes out. This pattern should be repeated often enough to provide drainage and retention for the huge rainfall events that will come. Water standing on roads makes poor roads.

Fifth 30
Create or provide a service center for Hamlet. This could be a co-op or it could be operated for profit. The vision is like a C-store except with these additions. Groceries could be delivered from an Internet grocery store to the co-op for pick up or later delivery. It would have services like a copy machine, a fax machine, UPS and FED EX shipping points. There could be many other services. I believe that those people who move to Hamlet will need some services to work their business. This service center will evolve into whatever services it needs.

Sixth 31
Each small business will get a free facelift. If there are empty commercial businesses, churches, schools and so forth they will be encouraged to be put into use. Empty schools will be encouraged to become private charter schools. Empty Churches will become part of the city meeting room structure. Roads entering and leaving town will have welcome to and you’re leaving signs professionally made. They will make you feel like you have arrived at a special place.

Finally, in my minds eye, I see a pretty little town surrounded by farmettes, small self-sustaining because those owning them have other incomes. I see a significant population increase. I see a peaceful conclave surrounded by a thick shelterbelt blocking out noise, dust, wind, blizzard, and smells. I see a little school and working churches again. This doesn’t solve all the problems but it makes good sense to solve some.