Saving Small Towns with Housing and Broadband

The Madville Times fought off rain-induced cabin fever yesterday with a larkish trip to Carthage, official population 187, to see the world-famous Straw Bale Museum. The museum doesn't post any operating hours; we just called and asked if the museum was open, and the woman replied, "It can be."

We enjoyed perusing the well-kept displays of small-town memorabilia as well as the museum itself, a spacious building made largely from locally available materials: straw bales from local fields and lumber recycled from local barns.

At least as enjoyable was our conversation with the museum lady about Carthage's efforts to keep itself alive. There are plenty of small towns Carthage's size, but few with the will or resources to build a museum of this scale. The community holds Straw Bale Days, which this year, in conjunction with the town's 125th anniversary, drew 3,000 visitors. Locals are now restoring the house where Charles Coughlin (former president of Briggs and Stratton and donor of the mighty Coughlin Campanile in Brookings) in order to turn it into a bed and breakfast.

But with the average of residents over 60, Carthage faces the leading edge of a demographic trend that is looming over the entire state: as the baby boomers grey and die, and as folks have fewer babies than in the old days, we need to import people to keep population up, our economy humming, and our tax base at least stable. How do we draw those new migrants: with jobs, with housing, or with both?

For Carthage, the answer appears to be housing first, business later. Carthage just doesn't offer much in the way of jobs. People who come to Carthage will come less for economic opportunities and more for lifestyle reasons: wanting to get away from the city, wanting a big lot where they can garden, wanting to retire near family. But the town also has a shortage of quality housing. The woman at the museum said that their group of community boosters would like to build a straw bale spec house and market it to retirees or semi-retired folks who would be attracted by quiet small-town life as well as an unusual but spectacularly energy-efficient building. With its limited resources, Carthage will find it easier to build and sell a new house or two and slowly increase its population than to draw an entreprenuer who wants to risk her capital on a new store or factory in a tiny town that may not be able to provide the necessary workforce.

However, the museum woman got us thinking about ways that Carthage could afford to draw business as well as residents. Carthage has just closed down its elementary school. This building, like every other school building in the state, was wired for Internet by Governor Janklow and his inmate work crews in the 1990s. Our current governor and legislature are now pushing small schools to consolidate, which means after barely a decade of use, the state is now going to leave a great deal of high-tech equipment lying idle. (Carthage wasn't forced to consolidate; they just decided they were too small to sustain the school. Nine other school districts in the state have been forced to consolidate this year.)

Perhaps there is a way to use the Internet connections in these closed schools to serve as wireless broadband hubs for their rural communities. Given top-of-the-line Internet access, farmers and small businesses around Carthage would have improved access to business information as well as opportunities to market their products to a larger audience. Using the old school as a base for community-wide wireless broadband would create opportunities for new residents to telecommute. Entrepreneurs looking to start new businesses would not have to invest in a brick-and-mortar store in Carthage; they could save capital and work from a virtual storefront. Piggybacking on the existing information technology in their school building, Carthage would have that many more opportunities to compete in the global economy and make living in Carthage a viable option for that many more potential residents.

Housing and broadband -- it's not a magic formula for every struggling town, but it may be the right starting combination for Carthage and some other small towns in our area. This combination builds on things we already have: straw bales for houses, and good technology at schools in even our smallest towns. Help new residents find affordable, comfortable (not to mention green!) places to live, help them stay connected to the world at large, and they may be able to create enough job opportunities for themselves to keep our Carthages alive and well.