Magic. How do you define it? It’s a more important Minot question than you might guess.
First, we are the ‘Magic’ City. When the Great Northern Railroad finished its 1886 construction season and stopped for the winter, it stopped in our valley. The town sprung up overnight — as if by magic. We earned our nickname early.
Second and more recently, we have this little thing called the ‘MAGIC’ Fund — it’s about $8 million little. Started in 1990 and funded by sales tax, the MAGIC Fund is our primary economic development tool. The goal of investments made with the fund was and is to attract jobs and businesses to Minot.
Now, you may be expecting or hoping I’ll rehash the successes or failures of MAGIC Fund investments. Sorry to disappoint you; this is not that.
I’m writing because I’ve been thinking about magic and what Minot’s next magic trick should be. To figure that out, we need a starting point in the conversation. So, I’m starting at the beginning — with the word itself and Google’s definition.
Magic:
Noun: the power of apparently influencing the course of events by using mysterious or supernatural forces.
Adjective: used in magic or working by magic; having or apparently having supernatural powers.
very effective in producing results, especially desired ones.
If we combine the two, it seems like magic involves doing things that we previously thought weren’t possible, or at the very least, had mysterious origins.
Now earlier, I suggested I’ve been thinking about our ‘next’ magic trick. That invites the question, what was our first trick?
Take a moment and think back to a 1990-state-of-mind in Minot. We had just come out of a hard decade for farming. The only oil that had surfaced was farther West and had busted years earlier. The future of Minot Air Force Base was far from certain. It’s pretty easy for me to see how success in attracting new businesses and jobs into our area would have seemed impossible. Confidence was not the standard. ‘Magic’ was truly one of our best options.
Now, if you know the mechanics of our business attraction magic tricks, there’s little mystery in incentivizing behavior with cash, low-interest loans, and tax breaks. Nonetheless, Cognizant is here in Minot today. Delta Vacations is here in Minot today. AGT is here in Minot today. And it’s easy to see how at the outset, achieving those successes would have seemed impossible.
In other words, I see the accomplishment of attracting and retaining those businesses — given the circumstances of the time — as somewhat magical. And we as a community are better getting them here.
So, here’s what I’ve been wondering about with regards to magic — what are those accomplishments that still seem impossible and mysterious?
In no particular order, here are a few problems with solutions that I see dwelling in the ‘impossible and mysterious’ regions of Minot’s collective consciousness.
Efficient, Improving, Effective Government
I’d argue that an investor’s willingness to enter a local economy like Minot has a lot to do with the manner in which they perceive the quality of decisions made on behalf of that region. Earned or not, the perception of government is often the opposite. What if we made strategic investments that delivered tangible, demonstrable, improvements to our government’s operation? Would you define success as ‘magic’?
Retaining and Returning our Talent
I’d argue that our most valuable commodity is our people and their ability, and we’ve had a trade deficit for generations. We export more than we import. I expect the inception of the MAGIC Fund has everything to do with solving this problem, but in 2018, we’ve yet to fully complete the trick. Perhaps we’d benefit from trying new methods of magic.
Perception of Life on the Northern Prairie
Like it or not, our ability to attract workers and businesses has a lot to do with overcoming an often negative or underinformed impression of the area. Beating back that perception is a problem with a solution that remains mysterious.
Fill Up our Empty Buildings
Downtown Minot is full of buildings that are not achieving, earning, or returning their full potential. That’s a drag. Is there a way to get these buildings active again? There are code challenges, there’s the high cost of historic renovations, and pulling off the trick requires property owners and investors who see an upside that outweighs the risk. It’s an issue of confidence, and I wonder if we can use ‘magic’ to lure investors off the sidelines and into the game?
Restore the River
The Mouse River is a source of much community misery. It used to be different. It can be different again, but not without some structural corrections that fundamentally change the way it flows. The cost and red tape associated with this bit of magic that will require master level wizardry.
Faith in Magic
Just say MAGIC Fund around town, and you can almost see the hamster turn the wheel that rolls the eyes. In spite of success stories mentioned above, there have also been embarrassing failures. The perception of ‘self-serving’ describes how many feel about the use of the fund. For those critics, would you call it ‘magic’ if we changed their mind?
On a final note, I have no doubt some will misconstrue my intent in writing this to suggest I am advocating using the MAGIC Fund to solve these problems. In case you’re wondering, I’m not saying we should, and I’m not saying we shouldn’t. I’m simply pointing out that from one perspective, we’ve used the MAGIC Fund to help us solve impossible problems in the past. And these are a few of the impossible problems I see us facing today.
Is the MAGIC Fund a tool we should use? And what other problems do you see our community facing that feel insurmountable? Feel free to discuss amongst yourselves.
