Deb Brown – Redeveloping underused spaces in your community
Deb Brown visited the Upper MN Valley Region in the Fall of 2022 where she presented to local units of government on how we can build a better community by redeveloping underused spaces in our region.
Is YOUR community idea friendly?
On November 15, the UMVRDC and SWIF partnered to bring nation speaker Deb Brown from www.saveyour.town to the region to talk about the redevelopment of underutilized spaces in communities. Deb’s presentation was intended to be a local conversation starter about what local communities can do to help redevelop underutilized spaces. In the afternoon Deb met with economic development professionals from SW MN and brainstormed specific examples and at 7pm that evening Deb gave a presentation that also had both a live and virtual participation option and was recorded for use by local community groups and boards later as they talk about what to do in their community.
This event follows up on a regional trend the UMVRDC has been seeing for some time on our annual issue survey, it supports the redevelopment potential of properties in our developable properties inventory and the resulting community visioning that UMVRDC staff Kevin Ketelsen is finalizing with Dawson, Madison, Montevideo, Benson and Ortonville on one property in each of their communities. The event also is in alignment with one of the goals in our recent CEDS to support and grow the number of businesses in our region by emphasizing redevelopment opportunity areas to provide places for entrepreneurs to open businesses.
Deb Brown collaborates with Becky McCray at www.saveyour.town and has her own business Building Possibility. You can find more details about their idea friendly process and their no-nonsense, “just do it” strategies at www.buildingpossibility.com. The UMVRDC has been a follower of Deb and Becky for a long time and believe their message is right sized for our small rural towns. Check out this video https://youtu.be/5hH0CdV4bLk on the idea friendly town. ADD the text you have about Deb here
The UMVRDC and SWIF https://swifoundation.org/ worked closely with Pioneer Public TV https://www.pioneer.org/to produce and record the event and we want local individuals, groups, councils and boards to consider watching it or portions of it as they talk about with to do about redevelopment in their own community.
Financial support provided by https://www.eda.gov/
Visit the presentation and slides from Deb’s latest visit to our region!
Presentation SlidesPresentation Video
