Small Nation has big plans for BG | News

The city and local organizations have engaged with the Bellefontaine-based firm in recent months to seek opportunities for local business success and improvement, according to a news release from the city.

“Bowling Green has long understood, valued and invested in its historic downtown,” Municipal Administrator Lori Tretter said in the release. “While it is important to celebrate and recognize the great things currently happening in our downtown, it is also healthy to assess other opportunities. Small Nation has successfully orchestrated small city redevelopment and consulted with other communities to share ideas and best practices.”

In a recent interview, Small Nation founder and CEO Jason Duff said the company is “very passionate about small businesses and small towns and, really, collectively, if you look around the country, there are more small towns and small businesses than the larger corporate rivals and cities.”

Together, the small towns and businesses are “a force, we’re a nation,” he said – the origins of the firm’s name.

Representatives from the community recently gave Duff and his team a tour of area businesses. The team met with owners and managers and got to learn about the city, Bowling Green history, and its relationship with Bowling Green State University.

Representatives from the city, the Downtown Special Improvement District, the Bowling Green Chamber of Commerce, and Bowling Green Economic Development coordinated the visit; they toured Bellefontaine in November.

“They’ve really organized a revitalization team,” Duff said.

He said that when the team toured Bellefontaine, they were able to meet with a number of their local businesses and hear their stories of startup and revitalization, and also see before and after images of the downtown.

Small Nation will take the information and data they gathered during their visit “to compile a study for Bowling Green’s best opportunities for growth and improvement to help inform and educate local officials, invigorate investors and inspire entrepreneurs.”

Small Nation is being paid $7,500 for their work, and Duff said they hope to have the study done in the next two months.

“The outcome that we hope out of this is that this report is not a report that is designed to sit on a shelf,” Duff said. “It’s a report that is designed to initiate conversation, strategies and projects that we believe will continue to spark the momentum and success in Bowling Green.”

“I think the visit highlights how fortunate we are to have a balance of businesses in our downtown that are unique, hardworking, and community and service oriented. They are valuable assets to the community that make Bowling Green a destination,” said Planning Director Heather Sayler in the release.

“We invest in places, spaces and dreams for small towns,” Duff said of Small Nation. “Our work began in Bellefontaine, Ohio, about 14 years ago.”

He said at that time, 80% of the first floors and spaces in the city’s downtown were vacant and the community was struggling to keep young people in the area. Coffeeshops and restaurants were lacking.

Duff set off for college at Ohio Northern University, and when he returned four years later, he said a lot had changed in Bellefontaine – for the worse. Big box pharmacies had purchased the independent stores and a major department store shuttered, leaving a number of empty buildings.

“How I looked at it was a lot of opportunity,” Duff said. “We started buying buildings, recruiting new businesses,” or encouraging people to start businesses they’d like to see in the community.

“Part of our success has been doubling down on local food,” he said, as well as investing and supporting speciality retail, in essence “giving people a reason to take a day trip and experience the town. We’ve been doing and at this for more than 10 years. We’ve renovated more than 56 historic buildings,” started properties for restaurants and numerous upper floor loft apartments.

He said nearly $35 million in private capital has been used to change downtown Bellefontaine.

“We’ve kind of used Bellefontaine as a living learning lab to really take a struggling town and make it a best-in-state destination, and share some of the principles that we learned,” Duff said. “What we do is want to help and share that knowledge and those case studies” with other towns and help them.

Duff himself has a connection to Bowling Green, saying he spent many summers attending music camps at BGSU.

“What I was so inspired to see was how things have evolved and changed since I was on campus,” he said of his recent visit to BG.

“Many towns that we work in – like Bellefontaine and others around the state – one of the first things they really are envious of is having a college or university in their town. And what is so exciting about working in Bowling Green is they have not only a college but a respected university. The proximity from where the university is to downtown and the properties between that area lends itself as a significant opportunity.

“Another thing I was impressed with was how the city, and particularly (Mayor Mike Aspacher and BGSU President Rodney Rogers) are working together,” Duff continued, noting the cooperation and planning in the gateway areas. He also took note of efforts in the city to integrate BGSU students into the downtown community.

Duff discussed the major challenges that small towns in the Midwest face.

“In the beginning, many towns struggle with a lack of vision,” he said. “How do they unlock and identify the story, the branding, what makes the town unique and distinctive? And history is one of the best things to uncover those opportunities. We love to buy and invest in historic buildings and understand how architecture, streetscape, the heritage of what was manufactured and made in the town, how they can weave it into the DNA and storytelling of what’s in the future. So, focusing on preservation and innovation is key. Preserving what gives the town its identity, and its purpose, but also innovating to what creative, adaptive reuses or entrepreneurial venues can take a community forward.”

A second challenge is access to capital. Working with area investors and community banks to fund projects and provide loans to entrepreneurs that want to start businesses is important, he said.

A third challenge is how communities focus on business recruitment and retention. Duff said many towns have great existing businesses that have been destinations for decades, and often owners are wanting to transition that business to the next generation.

He said in Bowling Green “there are great local businesses that could be perfect for a recent retiree or perfect for a recent graduate of the university to step in, in an apprentice management role, that could quickly become a business owner.”

Towns also struggle with being able to embrace “their weird, their funky, and what’s different,” said Duff. “No one wants to be stuck in the ‘middling many.’ Universities are asking this question, too. What can we be distinctive in?”

Small towns like Bowling Green and Bellefontaine are important, Duff said, “because small towns build great things. … The smaller towns are affordable” and the speed that things can get done in a small town is “often much greater than the bureaucracy and red tape that you get in larger markets.”

Further, he said, in a post-pandemic world where people can essentially work from anywhere, “you identify the communities and the amenities and the schools and the people that you want to live, and I think that towns like Bowling Green have so many great experiences already. It’s identifying what we’re missing, and the small tweaks and changes that even make it better and stronger.”