BROOKINGS — Out of many — one.
The “one” is the newly melded Brookings Regional Growth Alliance, headed up by newly installed Chief Executive Officer Lori Frederick. The “many” are the Brookings Area Chamber of Commerce; Brookings Economic Development Corp.; Downtown Brookings; and Visit Brookings.
“I think primarily this is a combination of resources coming together in collaboration,” Frederick explained to The Brookings Register in an interview. “Each of these organizations had a focus in various things. In some areas, there was a crossover.
“The Chamber might be doing some things in workforce economic development organization. Now through this collaboration, we can combine that and work on various aspects of that and have greater resources to really say: ‘What is our priority? Where can we put this and how can we collaborate together to move forward more?’ That’s the biggest thing about it. It’s really, how do we work and streamline those resources so that we’re not duplicating things?”
Frederick continued, “My background is in small business ownership for a number of years.” She also worked on economic development in communities such as Deadwood and Lead that have quite a bit of hospitality tourism. Finally, she worked for the state of South Dakota for the Governor’s Office of Economic Development.
“’Elevate Rapid City’ is similar to what BRGA now is,” the CEO noted. “(It’s) a combination of Chamber of Commerce, economic development organization, visitors bureau. Here we also have the downtown business association. I have quite a bit of experience in various of those applications.”
Frederick is originally from South Dakota. She moved to western Nebraska and owned a business there for several years. She earned a bachelor’s degree from South Dakota State University and a master’s degree from Chadron State College in Nebraska.
Looking for a balance and focus
With three weeks on the job, Frederick says, “When you’re doing something like this, I think the biggest challenge always is (deciding) our top priority. There is always a number of priorities. So I think our biggest challenge right now is working through the five or six things that we really want to see accomplished. We work with the city’s economic development plan. All of these organizations also have their focus. What we’re working through now is a bigger job, going through the focus each of those organizations had and see what we can really get accomplished.”
Looking to the business climate and mix in Brookings, the new CEO sees “a really good balance from the small businesses up to those larger corporations. That is unique in a community of this size and one of the reasons why I was attracted to this position. Most communities of this size don’t have the extent and breadth of business opportunities as ours does.” As examples, Frederick cited several recent ribbon-cutting ceremonies for startup smaller businesses and the ribbon-cutting for the expansion of Solventum.
“My philosophy is that we work with probably 75 to 80 percent with existing companies,” she noted. “Most job creation, most extension in a community comes from existing companies, whatever that size is.
“Probably a focus of 20 to 25 percent will be on business attraction, bringing other companies here or expanding to a second operation. That takes longer; it’s a bigger decision for a company to pick up and relocate or to add a second location. That really takes longer. We really want to focus on existing companies and how they’re growing and how we can help them.”
Housing: What type, where to build
Frederick recognizes the availability of housing as a factor tied to the business climate in Brookings. “We’re looking at updating our housing study,” she said. “It’s time for it. It’s been about five years with some interim data, so we will be looking at how to update that.”
“I would say that as with every community of the U.S., there’s always a need for some different types of housing,” she explained. “Workforce housing or affordable housing: Affordable housing is based on the average income in the area. What could be unique here is that affordability for college students versus the average worker may be different. What we want to take a look at is what are those average differences or balances there. We’re looking into that.
“We’re also looking into where to build houses. Limitation of land is always there. Density of land, how we build those houses; there may be a little more density in some of those areas.”
“There’s a considerable amount of land in the flood plain. Land is always a precious commodity,” Frederick noted. “We just want to make sure that the land that we do have is put to the highest and best use.
“We’re working closely with the city on that. We’ve already had discissions about what does that look like. That might be a little bit different than the planning. We’re seeing that in many communities where there’s mixed use. There might be some townhouse homes next to single-family homes instead of all types in one situation.
“What does that look like? We’re not necessarily spreading out. It might be a bit denser on some of that.”
With the presence of SDSU in Brookings, Frederick sees a good town-and-gown relationship. She’s had meeting with SDSU President Barry Dunn and city officials. “We’re figuring out how that looks and how everybody works together.”
In her closing remarks, the CEO noted, “Change happens no matter what. What we’re looking at is hard growth and long-term sustainability. What can happen to serve not only residents that are here now but the residents who will be here 20, 30 or even 50 years from now.”
— Contact John Kubal at [email protected].
Leave a Reply