All right, so I'm Christopher Stark, and we're here today in Phelps, Wisconsin, again for the Vilas Vision Leadership class.  So economic development in the arts and most of you, of course, all of you are from Vilas County with some exceptions that are up here.  So please enjoy what I've come to call the story of Phelps.  Sit back and enjoy.  This is downtown Phelps, and there's one thing that's missing from that right now that you know locally, and what is that? So that picture's just a little bit outdated now, isn't it? So that's how it looked just about a year ago.  This picture is about a year old.  I'm a big fan of maps, and in all my reports I put maps to identify where we are because you never know where the audience is from.  Where they're gonna be from or whatever, and so maps showing Vilas County.  And where the town of Phelps is located in Vilas, and that's right, in the state of Wisconsin.  We're right up here against the upper peninsula. 

 And if you go just a few clicks down the road here, we're almost to this yellow star right here at the Phelps Accelerator Building.  That yellow star signifies what has really come to be known as downtown Phelps unincorporated.  If you go about five to six miles to the east on Route 17, you're in the upper peninsula of Michigan.  If you look up here, you're at Lac Vieux Desert on the state line.  Most of you know that already, but what is that? [crosstalk] That's right.  It's the head waters of the Wisconsin River.  So it all starts right here in Vilas County and it all starts right here in the town of Phelps.  Another shot of downtown Phelps, and it's only really two blocks long.  But the community approached me and at that time, in 2012, the Town Chair for Phelps and the County Supervisor from Phelps approached me three years ago, and said, "Our downtown is dying.  "It's a decaying downtown. It's been in stagnation "for a long period of time. What can we do "to help improve the community development of Phelps?" And of course, at that time, I was fairly new here in the northwest. 

 I didn't have a clue.  I said, "Let's look at the situation." And so asked to take on that role, we're gonna show you some of the things that I decided to do, and then I'll also show you at the end some of the things that I would do differently.  As this whole thing was certainly very much a learning process for me in the community development steps.  So the first thing I did.  Now I'm going to show you more statistics here, so I don't want the glazed over look.  This actually tells a story here.  This is Phelps going back 100 years.  This community has lived and died with the lumber mill.  Lumbering was everything up here in Phelps.  1910, it used to be called Hackley, by the way, in its first few years of existence. 

 In 1910, here's the population of Phelps abut 800 and something.  By the way, that's the same size as Land O'Lakes right now.  And that's got a fairly thriving downtown as we saw earlier this morning.  But it's ramping up.  1920, 1930.  And look at this, 1930s.  What's happening in the 1930s nationwide? The Great Depression is going on, but look at Phelps.  Their greatest growth spurt occurring right here 1930 to 1940.  Look at that; their population increases that much.  The most people that they've ever had was in 1940. 

 Their greatest growth spurt was during the Great Depression.  Phelps during the Great Depression, 75-80 years ago, was absolutely booming right here.  And again it was almost all because of the lumber mill in this community.  If we look now, what's happened then, is that lumber mills started to lay off in the 40s and after World War II, not because of the war necessarily.  I'm sure the war actually generated a lot of jobs, but 1950, so by 1960, and the Historical Society tells me that the lumber mill went out of business in 1958.  There by 1960 it's down to this, and by 1970, we're back to the population we were at in 1910.  So again, the community more or less, lived and died with the lumber mill.  But Phelps has still got a lot of things going on in 1970.  They have a couple of...   where you sell cars, whatever they call that. 

 Dealership. Thank you.  Working on my English.  Dealerships. They have a lot of businesses.  Many people remember a lot of businesses in 1970.  And 1980, it starts to grow again during the period of the 70s.  By 1980, by 1990, it's during the 80s, it's kind of stayed stagnant but it's held its own.  As we go from 1990 to 2000, the population is increasing significantly, but with a little bit of a different twist this time.  Now most of the population is much older than it used to be and it doesn't quite have the younger, these are people moving up here that no longer have kids, and it's a big concern to the school district here in Phelps which is, I'm told, at least tied for the smallest school district in the state.  K through 12, approximately 134-144 students.  You do the math. 

 2000-2010 you see the drop in population right there.  And again the community fathers and the planning commission were very concerned about this.  So that the average age by 2010 right here in Phelps is 55.4.  And now that we're in 2015, it's only gone up a little bit since then.  All right.  This is the situation of Phelps three years ago, in 2012.  They had just lost 76 jobs at the Lillian Kerr Healthcare facility which is just a quarter of a mile down the street.  And those were good paying jobs too.  In a community of 1200 and just lost 76 jobs.  Right after that, certainly the only bank in downtown closed. 

 And what remained in the downtown essentially was just seven businesses and these were really not all full time businesses.  They were part time businesses.  A total of eight jobs in Phelps.  By the way, some of those are right now in this building, so technically they're not downtown.  So we have the barber shop next door, she's part time but she has moved into there because one of those buildings was declared unsafe to be downtown.  The Chamber of Commerce now located here was formerly downtown.  Economic activity at the time in 2010, I can get this from the 2010 census, that Phelps was capturing only 1.4% of all the retail activity in the county.  What's significant about that is their population is a lot more than the 1.4%.  And this is a tourist county, so that retail activity matters quite a bit.  When I showed this to the Planning Commission of Phelps there was a lot of comments but they had to see this. 

 The goal is to improve this gradually, so that by 2020, we hope it's on the upswing, but we'll see.   Here's some of the recent community development efforts here.  In July of 2012, this is just the background as I mentioned, I was approached by the County Supervisor, the Chair of the Planning Commission and the Town Chair to improve the downtown.  In October, again being fairly new at community development, a lot of background in economic development, I suggested interviewing a sampling of residents from the community.  And I would emphasis to all of them, not just people who are your friends, because I wanted people of different opinions to weigh in on this and to their credit, indeed they did that.  So in November and December three years ago, I was essentially interviewing along with at that time, you heard the name Ken Stuby earlier today.  Ken was the Economic Development Director of the county for the first couple of years that they had an economic development program.  He's been gone approximately three years now from the program.  But I interviewed about 35 people and Ken interviewed about seven and then I also did a focus group with the entire senior class of Phelps High, all ten of them.  [laughter] But you get a lot of results and we'll show some of those results here. 

 And these were the questions that I asked them.  First, because we don't have a grocery store here in Phelps, we don't have very many things in downtown at all.  So which shopping products do you need most that you wish were available in Phelps? And there you go.  Most of them were groceries and hardware.  The importance of those and pharmacy a bit.  Where do you currently shop for groceries? No surprise.  Overwhelmingly most of them in Eagle River.  Most people are going to either the Pick 'n Save or the Trig's in Eagle River.  You can see that some, probably on the Eastern edge, go into Iron River.  And then a couple of them go to Land O'. 

  And what is Phelps' greatest asset? According to them, not me now.  And it's lakes really with most referring to North Twin.  A beautiful asset of North Twin Lake here.  That's right across the street.  How do we develop downtown Phelps? Demolishing the Big Store and making facade improvements along with the importance of a grocery store.  They factor in very heavily, but I also really want you to focus on that demolishing of the Big Store because even though that doesn't show up in overwhelming numbers here with my statistics, that came up in conversation over and over again.  And I think it had been here so long, the Big Store had been here 110 years in this community, that I think it got to be in its last 20 years, as you know, it didn't look very attractive, and it was not structurally sound enough for the Historical Society to capture funds and be rebuilt, so the Big Store would show up very big in subconscious or in the psyche of many Phelps residents.   What should be the brand for Phelps? I was looking for something and to see if there was any consistency in there and most of them and Phelps on the Lake there was nothing that was a clear winner here.  This question was totally unnecessary.  I didn't have to ask it at all. 

 I just wanted to know what people thought of their community.  What the Phelps residents thought of their town.  And the extreme answers when I asked this, "What year was Phelps at its peak?" ranged from 1920 to the present.  Somebody had the nerve to say the present when I asked that question.  But the average of those who answered it, not all 42 maybe perhaps 30 or 32 answered the question, was 1967.  So you see that they believe the peak of their community, there was a sense that it was in the past.  So I asked, "What are your hobbies and interests?" because I wanted to know essentially what can you do without directly asking them this, what can you do to contribute to the community development of your town.  Apparently, everybody in the community is a carpenter.  [laughter] But also that speaks to the employment statistics will bear that out the census statistics because those involved in the building industry is twice as high as the state average, Wisconsin.  And that's because of our... 

 [inaudible] Lumbering, yes, but seasonal homeowners especially.  They have a lot, in many cases, bring in a lot more income and they always want an addition put on or some of the builders that are here right in the community, John Volkman, very well known among others here.  And a lot of their work is with the seasonal homeowners that are up here.  Another thing that I focused on was this: Maple syrup production, honey production.  A lot of people producing these.  Agribusiness and culinary arts.  They're all linked together right here.  Cooking and wine.  All of those go together even plant genetics.  And what we call culinary tourism. 

 Culinary tourism essentially the foodies.  People spend a lot of money to come to an area and purchase foods that are unique to a given area.  And so saw this right here and started thinking about developing that.   Now I also mentioned that I did a focus group of the senior class of Phelps High.  I won't revisit all the questions that I asked them in approximately an hour to an hour and 1/2 session here.  But essentially asking them, ten is not a huge sample obviously, but six out of ten in the senior class at Phelps High indicated that they would stay or come back to Phelps if there were suitable jobs in the community, and so I think that was an important message.   And which shopping products, they had a little bit of a different take.  They didn't care as much about the grocery store but certainly video games.  That was very important, so it's interesting to collect that input.   Now as I mentioned, I really started to focus on the Big Store because, as you can see here, the Big Store, and Matt, I think this is the first time you've seen this, really had gotten so it was not very attractive. 

 And this picture was taken right where we were a few minutes ago.  There's nothing there now obviously, but to tell the story of the Big Store It had...  It's been up here, this was the Big Store in 1905 so it first went up about 110-115 years ago.  Then called Hess and Evenson and it's been added on to since a little bit.  It's much bigger than that before it was torn down.  From the shores of the lake, again about 110 years ago when Phelps was called Hackley.  This is all courtesy of the Historical Society.   And this picture was taken, if you can tell me what year, can anybody tell me what year the automobile is? I'm not sure.  I'm actually estimating about 1940 because I think this is when Phelps was just about at its peak as we mentioned.  You can see all the workers lined up in front of the big store right there. 

 [inaudible] Not that I'm aware of.  I don't know what they're doing here.  I don't think they're demonstrating.  It may be a very good thing.  They just may be lined up to get their picture taken.  - That sign says something that says C I C.  - Okay. All right.  Further investigation required.  We'll get the microscopes.  But this picture was taken, I estimate about 75-80 years ago, so about 1935-1940. 

 I can work further with the Historical Society and try to pin a more exact date down.  But you see all the workers in front of the Big Store.  Both of them how important it was to the community and get a sense from this picture of the importance of the factory and the mill town at that time.   This is some academic research.  And yes, I did a fair amount on behalf of Phelps at that time to see essentially how do you solve this dilemma of the downtown and how do you improve the downtown.  I was trying to educate myself.  So after doing much academic research and the interviews, etc., I guess I kind of created this and felt that the big picture view, the 3,000-foot level looking at Phelps was this.  There were three keys to success.  And the first being expertise.  We just didn't have a lot of expertise in community and downtown development. 

 Had a lot of very intelligent people and creative people in the community.  Not a lot of experience in downtown development.  Secondly, well let's skip the next one and go to financing.  Important to have a financier and those with money to make private investment in the downtown.  But the one that I came to believe was really the most important thing above all was building a guiding coalition and that hadn't happened really since about approximately half century since the lumber mill had closed.  There hadn't been anybody who had really addressed this issue well.  The planning commission and those individuals, the Town Chair, etc., at that time were doing a good job and doing the best that they could.  But building a guiding coalition is all about leadership.  It speaks to that, and if you've built the right coalition you can do quite a bit in addressing your community's downtown efforts.  So you can see that we had big meetings there. 

 At this one there were approximately 200 people.  That's community member discussing the economic future of the community.  This was in January, actually a year ago this month.  And some of the community improvement strategies that we came up with together, where the first one was the Connect Communities.  Phelps, I felt, had to get involved in the Connect Communities program which is really a main street program for smaller towns.  They had to have the benefit of expertise.  Certainly more expertise than I have in downtown development, but those they get new ideas generated, the state.  The Grocery Store Task Force hasn't happened, but we'll talk about that a little bit more.  And the Tourism Strategy, Celeste is not here at the moment, but the tourism strategy we're continuing to work on.  When working with the lodge owners, between the Chamber and the lodge owners, but just something like collecting zip code statistics would tell us where are these tourists coming from and then we get information on where can we target. 

 Should we target our efforts to Chicago? Should we target our efforts to Milwaukee? Maybe all of the above.   But a little bit of tourism and creative place making.  Remember the culinary tourism? All that honey and maple syrup and all that activity.  Have somebody out here teach us culinary classes at Nicolet College.  In Phelps somebody is growing wine right now in the community.  Wine that can grown in colder weather and all of these things help develop the community.  Trail development has become very important too for both bicycle trails and now Phelps has ATV trails in the past year, year and a 1/2.  All of those will help contribute money to the downtown.  Thirdly, the Facade Squad was kind of an idea in addressing, remember all those carpenters before? All those people involved in carpentry that why not tap their talent with a little local Facade Squad? Now it turns out that this set off a buzz the Facade Squad and the culinary tourism but the Facade Squad has gotten bypass because the Big Store was torn down and that was one of the main places that we were gonna start, right there.  But that's okay that it's been torn down though. 

 All right, so here's a little bit on the culinary tourism.  There's a maple syrup fest every year here in April.   And then this is a little bit about the trails in Phelps here, and at that time was Town Chair of Phelps, Collin Schuck, I worked with.  What became very important for us to get private investment in the downtown, and that hadn't happened in years in Phelps.  And I hope that I gave it a boost a little bit.  I certainly couldn't purchase anything.  I didn't have the financial wherewithal to do that.  But in August of 2014, I made a presentation to the planning commission and a few other people.  There were about 22 people present, that's all, in the room, and I really addressed the issue of the Big Store and felt that the whole psychology of the community would improve if we could actually tear down the Big Store.  And this was not a news flash to anybody in Phelps. 

 I think they all agreed but it was the first time that they had heard it from somebody from the outside the community.  And so I looked that they were all listening to that very carefully.  And so just two months later, we had, as you heard Carl, Carl Roudebush, the chairman of our economic development corporation.  He was not in the audience that night but certain Barry was who was here earlier and our economic development director, Bob Egan, were.  They were listening very carefully, and Carl purchased the Big Store and that was in October of 2014, and by July of 2015, eight months later, nine months later, I guess that is, the Big Store was no more.  It was torn down.  A big step, and I think that most people in Phelps are very happy about that.  An example of private investment downtown, this is the ice cream shop now in Phelps.  I am sorry I don't have a before picture of this building because it was kind of an unattractive two-toned brown building, but when they bought it, they changed the appearance of it, and I've tried to get in there.  I've been in there before, but I try to get in there this past 4th of July when I was here for the events. 

 I tried to get in there three times and couldn't do it.  That's how busy they are.  They're not open this time of the year, but I think April 1st to October 31st is when they're open, but they're doing a terrific business in the community.   And of course, this is where we are today.  This is some of the private investment in Phelps The Accelerator right here.  And as I mentioned, I would talk about what I learned about my community development experiences, and what I would do differently.  And I may have the opportunity in Land O'Lakes coming up.  We'll see.  As they want me to get involved in there, but essentially the whole, I'm glad that I did what I did with the one-on-one interviews, and you learn a lot, but my approach would be different and I would in this instance, there was a little bit too much of what I thought of, in other words what Chris thought of, and not enough involvement with the community.  There should be more with a wider involvement of more community participants. 

 And less of what ideas that I'm coming up with.  And that's probably the single most important thing.  You've got to have buy-in from the community to make a community development investment happen, and so part of the guiding coalition.   And that's it.  Do we have questions.  [applause] Thank you very much. ECHO is on.