Rural Towns Find A New Way To Attract Small Businesses

The USA today has an excellent article about some small rural Kansas towns attempting to rebuild its economic base and to prevent "brain drain" one family at a time by giving away free land to families willing to relocate.

These small towns have decided that luring a big company to come and save the town is not the best way to rebuild its economic base. They instead focus on individual families, who they hope will move to the town, establish small businesses and contribute to the towns overall economic base. The extent to which these towns go to lure families is amazing. First they build off their reputations as small safe communities that allow people an escape from the fast-paced, high-crime big city life. Then these communities offer free land which relocating families can use to build homesteads. Finally, these communities offer money for down payments on homes and assistance in finding jobs.

Some of these communities have taken steps to promote small business development by establishing leadership classes, hiring small business development coordinators and have utilizing a 1-cent sales tax fund to make small business loans. In all, the article portrays communities tying to cultivate the purest form of entrepreneurial spirit from the ground up.