Handful of Iowa towns rise above rural decline

Bloomfield, Iowa, lacks the advantages some small Iowa towns have. It is not on the interstate highway system or a major airport.

But Bloomfield, Davis County’s seat in southern Iowa 11 miles from the Iowa-Missouri border, grew its population from 2,640 in 2010 to 2,682 in 2020, according to new census data.

“Even if people aren’t working here, they’re living here,” Tammy Roberts, the town’s community development director, said.

A handful of small Iowa towns like Bloomfield, with populations of less than 5,000 and not part of a larger metro area, bucked the trend and grew their populations in the recently released 2020 census.

“A lot of this stuff is so fuzzy, it’s really difficult to tie it to one particular factor,” Liesl Eathington, Iowa State University economics researcher and the Iowa Community Indicators Program coordinator, said.

“The bottom line is, we can’t figure out, really, the magic recipe for growth.”

RELYING ON A STORY

Having a story to tell helps a small town.

Dyersville’s story was on full display Aug. 12 when Fox Sports broadcast the first Field of Dreams Major League Baseball game from the tourist attraction just outside of town that became famous with the 1989 movie, “Field of Dreams.”

“I just think we had a very good event. Just a lot of good will,” Dyersville Mayor James Heavens, who watched the New York Yankees-Chicago White Sox game in Major League Baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred’s box, said.

“There’s something about the movie site and that movie that still strikes a nerve,” Heavens said about the baseball field in a cornfield where the movie was filmed. The game was played on a specially built ball field near the old movie set.

Dyersville — whose 2020 population was 4,477, up from 4,058 in 2010 and 4,035 in 2000 — already had other attractions in northeast Iowa before the movie. Nicknamed the “The Farm Toy Capital of the World,” it has the National Farm Toy Museum because of the famous Ertl farm toy company that is in town.

The Basilica of St. Francis Xavier church on Third Street draws tourists to Dyersville. The result of all this is a town that can count successes other than population growth, Heavens said. The city is in good financial shape and moving forward, he said.

“Having a story to tell helps, but I think the other thing here is we really have an ability to execute plans,” Heavens said. “Even as objective as I can be, Dyersville is a very successful city.”

A little more than 100 miles south of Dyersville, Kalona markets a history that includes artisans and local Mennonite and Amish residents who bring different religious customs but also unique businesses to the area.

“A lot of folks are interested in that,” Krista Hershberger, assistant director of the Kalona Chamber of Commerce, said. “It’s just such a different way of doing life.”

Ed Miller grew up in Kansas before moving to Kalona 45 years ago after marrying a woman from nearby Wayland. “I think it’s important to the people here to understand what their heritage is, and to see it in displays,” he said.

Miller, whose great-great grandfather lived in Kalona in the 1860s before moving to Kansas, volunteers at the Kalona Historical Museum.

Kalona, on the north edge of Washington County, south of Iowa City, has 2,630 residents in the new census, up from 2,363 in 2010 and 2,293 in 2000. It has the museum, several festivals and downtown businesses that cater to people interested in specialty shops. “People like to come to Kalona because it’s a friendly community,” Ronald Slechta, publisher of the local newspaper, said.

Being a half-hour drive from Iowa City, the state’s fifth-largest city, helps Kalona because of people in that metro area who take the short drive to Kalona for its offerings.

Near Kalona, the town of Riverside created its own story: the future birthplace of the fictional Star Trek starship Captain James T. Kirk.

Civic leaders made the claim in 1985 for their summer community festival, coining the name TrekFest, after reading that Kirk would be born in Iowa in the future. Paramount Pictures, which owns the Star Trek film franchise, accepted Riverside’s claim.

But Riverside, whose population in 2020 grew to 1,060 from 993 in 2010 and 928 in 2000, also benefits from a nearby casino. The casino’s foundation provides grants for community betterment projects that include rebuilding streets and other infrastructure but also amenities tied to community aesthetics, the arts, recreation and education.

The population in Audubon, in western Iowa, has dropped from 2,382 in 2000 and 2,176 in 2010 to 2,053 in 2020. All of Audubon County only has 5,674 residents, down from 6,119 in the 2010 census.

Nonetheless, Audubon opened a $2.6 million community center in November 2018 which volunteers for the nonprofit center are already planning a $2 million expansion for.

Residents volunteer to show movies for $4 admission Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays at the Rose Theater movie house.

The town has farmers markets, the annual T-Bone Festival and thriving businesses. Even Albert the Bull, the huge statue greeting motorists from the south, got attention, with a recent $18,000 renovation.

“I guess our common theme in the area is volunteers,” Sara Slater, Audubon County’s economic development and tourism director, said.

ANALYZING A SMALL TOWN

Roberts said one of the smartest things Bloomfield’s business leaders did in recent years was a thorough needs assessment that included why those needs exist. Bloomfield Main Street, the local business support organization, got an $18,000 grant from the Iowa Economic Development Authority’s Main Street Iowa program for the study, which the two groups conducted in 2018.

They analyzed existing housing, income and jobs, before diving head-on into weaknesses — deteriorating infrastructure like streets and sewers, for example — along with strengths.

“It’s very holistic,” Roberts, who was Bloomfield Main Street’s director when the study was done, said. “You’ve got to have that understanding of what your businesses think and what your communities think.”

That doesn’t mean total agreement. In 2018, Mayor Dan Wiegand vetoed a streetscape project for which the city had more than $600,000 in grants. The City Council vote approving the project was 3-2 but four votes were needed to override the veto.

Wiegand said in his veto message the timetable for completing the project was unattainable. The veto has those supporting the project hoping he is voted out of office this coming fall.

Wiegand said in an IowaWatch interview he hoped others saw Bloomfield as a place they’d like to live, with close-by industry for jobs, local health care and day care options, and a good school system.

“It’s just a safe community for people to live in,” he said.

Plus, it has local businesses that provide essentials, including a grocery store, shops, restaurants and local utilities.

The benefits of having goods in local businesses showed during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Bloomfield has everything it needs to sustain itself,” said Tori Ward, a six-month Pathfinders Resource Conservation and Development contract employee working at Bloomfield Main Street. “That’s crazy to me.”

STATE ASSISTANCE

Iowa has doled out $300,000 in Rural Innovation Grants each of the last two fiscal years to rural towns and counties to fund projects that local leaders hope put a spark in their towns. All but seven of the 34 cash awards handed out in the program’s first two years — fiscals 2020 and 2021 — went to towns with fewer than 5,000 people and all went to towns of around 10,000 or fewer, state Department of Economic Development reports show.

The state funded projects like sound and lighting gear for a community theater technical training program for youth in St. Ansgar; design work for three housing developments in Manning; developing a rural grocery delivery system in Manning and Lenox; leadership training for Latino communities in Hampton, Tama and Perry; and improvements to Chariton’s downtown square. Other projects focused on business development, aesthetics and training, as well.

Demand for the funding exceeds supply. While 22 applicants sought a total of $416,395 from the state in fiscal 2020 for local innovation projects, 64 sought $1.2 million in fiscal 2021, state reports show. That meant $3 in requests were rejected for every $1 approved. A new round of applications is being accepted for fiscal 2022, which began July 1.

Empower Rural Iowa gives $10,000 grants to towns to conduct rural housing assessments and, in some cases, demolish dilapidated homes. Leaders in small towns interviewed by IowaWatch said they face a housing shortage.

“We have some communities that haven’t had a new house built in 10, 20 years,” Liesl Seabert, the Center for Rural Revitalization director, said in an IowaWatch interview.

Ten of the 60 towns applying in fiscal 2020 and six of the eight applying in fiscal 2021 won grants. The towns work with the Iowa State University Extension Service to determine what kind of housing they need and how to deal with factors such as zoning and housing codes to make housing available.

“It’s much more action focused than to just produce a report that will stay on the shelf,” Seabert said. “We know it’s not solving housing, but we are helping.”

This story was produced by the Iowa Center for Public Affairs Journalism-IowaWatch, a nonprofit, online news website that collaborates with news organizations to produce explanatory and investigative reporting. Read more at www.IowaWatch.org. Suzanne Behnke of IowaWatch contributed to this report. IowaWatch reporting in this project was made possible by support from the Solutions Journalism Network, a nonprofit organization dedicated to rigorous and compelling reporting about responses to social problems.