City Officials Attend "Blueprint Kick-Off Orientation" In Lansing

IRONWOOD, MI - Saturday, August 09, 2008 - Downtown Ironwood Development Authority (DIDA) Chairman George Goerig and Community Development Director Dan Petersen attended a Blueprint Kick-Off Orientation meeting in our State's Capitol Wednesday.

The City of Ironwood was selected, along with five other Michigan cities, to participate in this latest round of the Blueprint program. Special consultants are hired to examine the City's downtown business district; to identify the district's positives and negatives; and to develop a plan for the City to follow that will eventually lead to meaningful improvements.

Goerig told the Chronicle that they met with representatives of HyettPalma, the Alexandria, Virginia-based consulting firm was selected to draft the Blueprint for the City of Ironwood. He said, "I'm rather impressed with HyettPalma. They seem pretty straight-forward. They didn't seem like 'Well, you're paying us, so we'll tell you what you want to hear.'"

He went on to say, "It's a man and a woman, and they're older. It's not a young consulting firm."

According to Goerig, The HyettPalma representative said, "When we come to town, we'll probably piss some people off because we're going to tell you your faults. And we're going to point them out to you. We'll try to tell you how to correct them, but it's up to you to correct them."

Goerig said the meeting left him with a good feeling and that he believes it will lead to improvements for the City's downtown. He said he was able to meet representatives of other cities that had already completed the program or were in the process, and that everybody had positive things to say about the initiative.

The program will require the City to create a Process Committee. This Committee will be required to commit volunteer hours and other resources to the five-month process of putting the Blueprint plan together. Volunteers must also commit to assisting with the initial market study.

According to program officials, by December 31, 2008 (and subsequent year-ends through 2012), it is anticipated that the local community will be ready to report to MSHDA the progress of activities described below, as originally defined in the Blueprint area:

  1. Total Taxable Property Value of the Downtown
  2. Number of new jobs created
  3. Dollar amount of new private investment
  4. List of public infrastructure improvements and their costs
  5. List of economic development tools that were utilized
  6. List of new businesses
  7. List of closed businesses
  8. Number of total businesses
  9. Number of housing units
  10. Occupied retail space (square feet)
  11. Vacant retail space (square feet)
  12. Occupied office space (square feet)
  13. Vacant office space (square feet)
  14. Occupied residential space (square feet)
  15. Vacant residential space (square feet)
  16. Linked, new economic development projects, located outside of the original Blueprint area

EDITOR'S NOTE: This is, by no means "a walk in the park!" This program, in order to be effective, will take an immense amount of community involvement. The DIDA's real challenge will be to get downtown business owners to commit the time and energy needed to make the program succeed. How many business owners can afford to take valuable time away from their businesses to participate? Most business owners are doing all they can just to survive.

The City of Ironwood has spent thousands of dollars on similar plans in the past. These plans currently sit collecting dust on a shelf in the Community Development Conference room. The consultants that create these plans and those that blindly endorse them cannot stand when people question the logic or reason for spending the City's limited resources on yet another plan. What makes anyone think that this new plan is any different that the dozen or so plans the City has "invested in" in the past?

The consultants that create these programs hate people who oppose them. Naturally, if they can't con the majority of a community to buy into their programs, they will quickly go out of business. It's relatively easy to persuade the naive or the ignorant. Most successful downtown business people already recognize the problems with the downtown district. Most of them can offer quick, cheap and easy solutions to them. What these consultants offer to our community is good old-fashioned common sense. Does the City really need to spend $15,000 of it's limited funds on common sense ideas that have already been suggested to them?

A pint of example is worth a gallon of advice. Why can't we learn from the example Hurley has already set for us? They did their downtown right! What secret tidbit will this high-priced consulting firm offer that is any better than the  ideas already highlighted on Silver Street?