Successful communities define rural swagger

During the recent Kansas Rural Prosperity Summit, Kansas Sampler Foundation Executive Director Marci Penner moderated a Rural Community Success Spotlight panel highlighting towns with swagger.

Featured were panelists Luke Mahin, Courtland, Kansas; Paul Cloutier, Humboldt, Kansas; Jarrod McCartney, Red Cloud, Nebraska; and Tammy Bruckerhoff, Hermann, Missouri.

Penner kicked off the panel discussion by asking the panelists why their successful towns have rural swagger.

“If you’ve got that swagger, I’m pretty sure that young people and everybody are going to want to be part of that,” Penner said, who noted that Beth Barlow coined the term for a Kansas Sampler Foundation event this summer in Humboldt.

Cloutier, a designer and entrepreneur who helped found the development organization A Bolder Humboldt, said swagger is a great word. “It sort of connotes this idea of action, of having confidence and hope and optimism. All of those words we don’t really associate with rural communities anymore, as some of those things have been lost.” The New York Times featured Humboldt in a 2022 travel list earlier this year because of its efforts to revitalize the community.

“In Humboldt, a lot of our goal has been to recreate this sense of energy and possibility that things can happen.” Cloutier said it’s important to consider why people move away and why they come back, especially young people.

Red Cloud is the childhood home of Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Willa Cather. McCartney said, “I think our downtown is what gives us swagger—something that really shines brightly to visitors we have.” He explained Red Cloud is restoring historic buildings downtown with the help of the Cather Foundation, which he said has invested close to $20 million for the effort.

Bruckerhoff acknowledged that Hermann’s ideal location in wine country gives the town an advantage in attracting tourists. “What we’ve found is people want to come to Hermann to get away from Kansas City or to get away from St. Louis, and it is worth the drive,” she said. The town has continued to add additional businesses and attractions to support the increased tourism.

“We have a whole surge of young entrepreneurs that came as visitors but now they’ve started businesses.” She said their biggest problem now is that there are no longer any businesses available for sale in their downtown.

Mahin, who is Courtland’s former economic development director, owns Irrigation Ales, a brewery he started with his wife. “Now it’s a new world, getting to really feel that stress of businesses that I helped and understand what they go through as a business owner.”

He said those businesses are what gives Courtland swagger despite its small size. Most towns of fewer than 300 people don’t have a retail boutique, a paint-your-own pottery studio, a pheasant farm, a commodity brokerage, co-working space, salons, Airbnb rentals, a restaurant, a health and wellness center and a microbrewery, but Courtland has all these businesses and more.

“That’s on top of the entities we already had like the Kansas Bostwick Irrigation District that generates a lot of income for our area to keep our towns viable,” he said.

The panelists shared some of the roadblocks and growing pains their towns have faced and how they meet those challenges. They also shared stories of how their communities sparked the changes that led to success.

Advice to move rural towns forward

Penner asked the panelists to share what advice they have to help other communities move forward.

Mahin shared an idea by Jeff Yost with the Nebraska Community Foundation that capital—whether human or financial—flows to positivity and optimism. Mahin explained if you can’t gain momentum and get positivity and optimism going, “nobody is going to invest in your town and nobody is going to want to help.” He also encouraged towns to talk to new community members and get them involved in something.

“Community partnerships have been instrumental in making Hermann successful,” Bruckerhoff said. “The No. 1 setback we sometimes have is ourselves, so don’t be afraid to reach out and be creative about new ways to get help.” That may mean outsourcing some of the services the city needs and using resources outside of your office to make your product and the town better.

Cloutier encouraged rural towns to design what they want and be a bit selfish about creating a town you want to live in. “Think about what you need and be passionate about it because that’s what you will connect with and continue to have energy for.” That will help you keep going on the bad days when you wonder if it’s worth all the hard work, he said.

McCartney said, “Don’t take negativity personally.” There will always be social media trolls and others who have nothing good to say about change. He encouraged stakeholders to keep making partnerships and collaborating with people who share that vision.

“Good enough is not necessarily good enough.” He shared a story of when Red Cloud began a project to build a child development center. One local contractor they asked to work on the project turned it down because he felt the plans were “too good for Red Cloud.” McCartney said the team didn’t take that negative sentiment to heart and moved on with the bold plan. The town continues striving to make Red Cloud the best place that it can possibly be.

“I think we need to be proud of who we are. I think we need to understand what it is that makes us unique and great in our rural communities—and be out there and talk about it, be loud and proud about it,” Cloutier said.

Penner concluded the panel discussion by encouraging people to reach out to one another and take advantage of the resources and skills others can offer. “Networking is the ultimate answer, but to make networking work we need to know each other.”

Shauna Rumbaugh can be reached at 620-227-1805 or [email protected].