Small Towns: Redwing Minnesota
- 3 minutes read - 618 wordsIs there anything more hopeful than Main Street
I love walking through the business district of small towns and take a careful look at the buildings. Here in Minnesota, many of these buildings are well over 100 years old, and they were clearly a source of pride to the townspeople that built them.
Take a look at the top of these buildings and you’ll notice masonry details like toothing / dentil courses, artistic stone work, and family names added to the building. These towns built elegant and ornate municipal buildings to host public performances and lectures, and you’ll often find a library building that was funded by Andrew Carnegie.
In other words, these buildings serve as a combination of artwork and a historical record of what the town valued. They are a time capsule we can use to revisit the past.
Hope and Optimism
No rational person would spend the time, effort, and money to add “useless” architectual details to a building unless they were hopeful and optimistic about the future. No rational person would spend a small fortune on a municipal building unless they were hopeful and optimistic about the future.
These people believed in their town. They believed in their neighbors. They believed in the promise of their country. Consequently, they invested in their future, and the future of their town.
Let’s Bring ‘Em Back
The dying of small towns is well known. People left to work in cites. Businesses were choked out by big box stores. Cars make it easier to travel to larger towns and cites to work and shop. The hope and optimism that built these towns is gone, and the families with it.
But it doesn’t have to be that way any longer. Perhaps the greatest factor pulling young people out of small towns is employment. What opportunities are there for young people to get a good paying job in one of these towns, even if they want to stay and raise their families?
Remote Work is the Key
The pandemic taught us what many tech companies already knew - many jobs can be done from anywhere that has reliable power and internet access. The trend of remote work will continue, especially as businesses learn how to manage remote workers. Small towns can, and should benefit from this trend.
Who doesn’t want to raise their kids in a safe environment with good schools? A place they can walk or bike to school, where people know their neighbors? A place where you can afford a home with a yard?
A town like Red Wing is close enough to a major metropolitian area to be convienient to go to a sporting or music event, yet it’s rural enough to offer all of these small town benefits. In a little over an hour you can be at a Twins game, catch a flight out of MSP, or show up in the office once a week. It’s on the Amtrack Borealis route between St. Paul and Chicago, so you can enjoy a low hassle trip to Milwaukee or Chicago.
Let’s Invest in Small Towns Again
A town with the history and beauty of Red Wing should be a destination for people to live and work. It’s time to invest in these towns again. With infrastructure grants for broadband, and incentives for renovating old buildings to function as office spaces for remote workers, towns like Red Wing can thrive again.
The coffee shops, restaurants, and book stores in town would love the additional business. The schools would love to have more students. The town would love to have more families.
Let’s invest and bring back the hope and optimism that built these towns in the first place.
