empty buildings
They put a restaurant in a roofless building
I created the Tour of Empty Buildings ten years ago, in 2013. There have been many towns that ran with the idea and host tours too. Natchez, MS, Danville, KY, Jefferson, IA, Oglesby,Il are just a few of them. The Texas Historical Commission has been hosting Imagine The Possibilities Tour in small towns state wide…
Read MoreThe Tour of Empty Buildings Long Story
I’d like to share the story of one town that suffered a huge economic blow, then kind of got stuck at the bottom, and how they got out. This is Webster City, Iowa, Population about 8,000. It was home to a factory that at its peak employed over 2,000 workers. In 2009, the corporation announced…
Read MoreArt and empty buildings
SaveYour.Town received an email with a story about art and an empty building we want to share today. Deb Land, the Mural Coordinator for Sayre Revitalization in Athens, PA sent this. You have all been so helpful to our small town of Sayre, PA. I read your newsletter faithfully! We have had two successful Pop Up…
Read MoreHousing: Do you need a developer for second story housing?
Not every second story housing project is possible by a bank loaning someone the money to build or rehab. Webster City, Iowa has several buildings downtown with second story spaces. Three of those second stories are now housing. It wasn’t a developer that came in and bought the buildings and fixed them up. That’s a…
Read MoreEmpty Lots
Have you ever been to a small town without empty lots? Me neither. They don’t have to stay empty either! This is one of my favorite ideas – Create an outdoor museum! Jerry Johnson, from JLJ Design Studio in Richardson, Texas, came up with an idea of a rusted tractor graveyard, but you could make almost any kind…
Read MoreWant a coffee shop? Start small
Brandon and Alicia had this idea that the old bank building they own just might a good coffee shop with WiFi. They looked at prices for all the equipment, got ideas for other vendors to go into the location, and started planning big. But how do they know it will even work as a coffee shop?…
Read MoreIs small scale manufacturing a thing for small towns?
Just what is small scale manufacturing? It’s the artisan makers, the prototyping to small scale, it’s the production at scale, the makerspaces and the shared commercial kitchens and workshops. You’d be looking for craft brewers, artisan businesses, contract manufacturing, commercial kitchens, farmers market organizers, and the ‘connectors’. Let’s play a short game of who do…
Read MoreRebuttal to the New York Times
In 2016 we had a young man who was writing an article for the New York Times come to town. He was ready to tell the story of how our town lost a major manufacturer and it was awful for us. I disagreed and wrote this rebuttal. I like Brendan Hoffman. He first traveled to…
Read MoreEmpty Buildings Tour
We did an Empty Buildings Tour in Webster City, Iowa. It worked! Our next two part webinar is Filling Empty Buildings. It’s geared specifically towards small towns and we give them practical steps they can put into action right away. More info at www.saveyour.town/empty It begins June 12, 2018.
Read MoreCity Codes can be changed
If one city council can write a code, another one can change it! We talk about this a lot when sharing our empty buildings stories. I recently visited with a city clerk in Stanhope, Iowa and she mentioned they are working on changing their code. They are instituting Building Maintenance Code that they got from…
Read More