Nearly 400 community members were in attendance at the chamber’s annual meeting that showcased local efforts geared towards revitalizing the area, including downtown Springfield. But it also featured keynote speaker John Reuter who gave guest advice on how to make the community more financially strong and resilient.
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Reuter is a board member of the organization Strong Towns, which focuses on revitalizing efforts in small and medium-sized communities. He grew up in a small logging town in Oregon and in 2007 became the youngest person to be elected into city council in Sandpoint, Idaho. He was later selected by his peers to be council president.
Reuter currently works as the national director of local and bipartisan strategies for the League of Conservation Voters, an environmental advocacy group. According to information from Strong Towns, he is “particularly drawn to the notion that economic development is a community endeavor not just belonging to the planners.”
“We at Strong Towns started noticing that cities were going broke and struggling to pay the bills. We wanted to look at this new development and see if it was working out. What is happening with this approach and how does it compare to the way that we used to build places,” Reuter said on Thursday.
In his address at the chamber’s event in Springfield he discussed ways to take small steps towards addressing areas where community members are struggling. That could include taking on small projects that will ensure more sustained financial growth in the long term instead of large development projects that may offer short term solutions.
“It is a very human thing when we see a short term return and we fail to see the long term consequences,” Reuter said.
“There are other choices that we can make here about how we think about our future and how we choose to grow,” he added.
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Reuter said that could be building value in existing spaces in the community instead of focusing on a “build it and they will come” approch. He said that communities should slowly build up to larger projects. He said that includes utilizing existing parking spots in an area and by implementing paid parking if free parking areas are continually reaching max capacity.
“You actually have something special here in terms of the built environment and the assets that you have there when I look at your downtown and some of your neighborhoods,” he said.
Several businesses and those connected to the business community were also honored Thursday evening, including Benjamin Steel, which won best business of the year; Imperial Express, which one small business of the year; and Rudy’s Smokehouse BBQ, which won restaurant/retailer of the year.
The former chair of the chamber Jim Lagos was honored for his years of service and Tom Loftis received the Richard L. Kuss Lifetime Achievement Award for his work in aiding or being involved in several large projects in the area over the years.
That includes the Clark State Performing Art Center, the Heritage Center Museum, the NTPRD Chiller and the rebuilding of Carleton Davidson Stadium.
“Springfield is a small enough town that you can make a difference in it,”Loftis said he was told years ago.
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