Questions:
1.Downtown Bismarck produces the highest value per acre in all of Bismarck-Mandan, what is one of your strategies to keep Downtown producing for the community?
2. What are your top 3 priorities or projects you’d like to see for Downtown Bismarck in the next 4 years?
3. What is your view on Governor Burgum’s Main Street Initiative? https://www.mainstreetnd.com/
Answers:
1. As the owner of a commercial downtown building, I am a tax payer of some of the highest value-per-acre property in Bismarck. I understand the importance of the Downtown tax base to the success of the entire city – for example in covering costs of those areas where the tax base isn’t dense enough to pay for ongoing city-services costs. I believe in the future of all of Bismarck. I have invested to improve thousands of square feet of what was previously unusable, vacant downtown office space, that is now state-of-the-art commercial space. I will continue making additional improvements that will generate tax revenue for the city, add to the historic character of downtown, provide community gathering space, and foster small businesses. If elected, I would be the only business owner, and the only Downtown property owner/tax payer on the city commission. We cannot go backwards. We must manage growth wisely. It is important that the recommendations of the recent task forces and commissions studying our challenges move forward – to address homelessness and addiction, to address specials, to address property taxes, to address the funding for the infrastructure needs of the entire city. The city commission needs to evaluate those recommendations and put policies in place to implement them.
2. The city commission must continue to work with non-profit organizations and private partners, along with county agencies, through public-private partnerships, to address the homelessness and behavioral health issues that challenge Downtown Bismarck. This is a priority for our city. Many of the projects I’d like to see are important across the entire city, while they impact the Downtown. For example I’d like to see the city engage in updating its strategic plan, in conjunction with the updated Master Growth Plan and other agency and metropolitan area planning efforts. We need a new map so that we can go forward managing smartly. I would like to see downtown projects such as Depot Plaza project completed, or another Commons area, in time for the 150th anniversary of the founding of Bismarck, (2023) so that family-friendly outdoor community gatherings can be held in Downtown Bismarck. I would see that the City commission and Bismarck’s downtown capitalize on this opportunity to promote Bismarck
3. I have been “walking the talk” of the Governor’s Initiative for years, and I’m well down that road. I’m a proud Bismarck native, and my husband and I chose to raise our family and start three businesses here because we recognize Bismarck’s strengths and capitalize on them for our regional work. When we were looking for a location for our businesses, we purposefully decided not to buy or build on the edge of town, (which probably would have been more convenient for our fleet of field vehicles and field equipment.) Instead, after sound planning and working with community economic development resources, we chose to invest $2.5 million dollars (so far) in the renovation of a gem of an historic downtown building that includes mixed-use commercial space for four businesses: a professional consulting firm, a coworking space, a restaurant, and a bakery. It is a work-in-progress. As historic preservation professionals, we are dedicated to balancing our city’s and our region’s progress with respecting its unique past. Since its opening, I have used our coworking space, Juniper Workantile, to promote entrepreneurism and to support Bismarck’s startup community.
The Workantile has become a community gathering space that brings people downtown, such as seniors for events like book clubs and retirement parties, young professionals for meet ups, and youth for pre-prom banquets and team photos. I offer our space to non-profits for their board meetings, to multi-level marketing women to host pop-up micro retail events, and I welcome large businesses headquartered on the edges of town, such as MDU and the U of Mary to conduct their strategic planning retreats and training in the vibrant atmosphere of downtown Bismarck. For my own company, Juniper, based in Downtown, I continue to create good 21st century jobs that pay livable wages and provide cutting-edge technology to highly-skilled employees, whom I have to recruit and bring to Bismarck from all around the country, (after I try to find someone local, first, of course.) To do our work, I use gigabite internet technology and other cutting-edge technologies to keep my small business competitive in an increasingly competitive regional and nationwide market. In all I do, I emphasize Bismarck’s strengths and always encourage people to get involved in the community. These are themes touched upon in the Main Street Initiative. I walk this talk every day. On a small scale, I have “activated” my own alleyway with public art, beginning with a mural size blow-up of Shane Balkowitz’s “Murderer’s Gulch,” which was a downtown community-based photography project which I helped to promote and that I illuminate for 24-hour, year-round viewing of alley art. I purchase and hang original artwork by Bismarck artists throughout our space. To encourage another kind of “quality of life,” I pay for a commercial recycling dumpster in the alleyway that is covertly (but well-intentionally) filled twice a week by neighboring businesses in a block radius. We need to promote commercial recycling.
I am walking this talk, too. I am a founder and leader of an Alliance to save Bismarck’s neighborhood schools, specifically dedicated to highlighting the importance of walkability, balancing the costs and cultural impacts of building larger schools on the edges of town, and encouraging the renovation and reuse of our existing school structures. I have worked closely for years with experts of the BPS school district to develop INCLUSIVE educational strategies, including a highly-praised and successful replicable model to address behavioral issues. Recently my husband and I launched an endowment for the BPS Inclusive Sports and Recreation program that inspired a community-wide giving campaign. My feeling is: if our community isn’t going to be inclusive, it isn’t going to be innovative. I have sponsored a S.T.E.A.M fair at a Bismarck elementary school and participated in quite a number of student, teacher, and career-counselor training workshops to promote forward-looking, home-grown Bismarck careers in the sciences. We need our students to know they can follow their love of the sciences and find good jobs in Bismarck. I have hosted college-level interns and business start-ups to help them see how small businesses are vitally important to Bismarck’s health. I think you can see I am dedicated to building the kind of community that I want Bismarck to be for everyone. While I have not been one of the folks out front preaching that Bismarck should get on board the Governor’s Initiative, I have been a champion, practicing its vision for the community. Actions speak loudly, to me. While I continue to invest in the vitality of Downtown Bismarck, I want this vision to benefit every street in town. If I am elected, I would put the Initiative’s core themes into action on the commission by looking at our city policies to see which help or hinder success across all of Bismarck, and I would manage for fiscally and culturally responsible growth, across all of Bismarck.