Ronan Roundtable Co-op training considered

Ronan’s Community Roundtable, a group of community leaders formed to facilitate communication and collaboration among businesses, city government, and others connected to and interested in downtown Ronan, met May 21. This group is focused on helping address the top priorities identified by the Ronan community through a needs assessment process the community participated in three years ago: downtown revitalization and business development, and communication and collaboration.

One way that downtown revitalization might be boosted, said Brianna Ewert, Director of Lake County Community Development Corporation’s (LCCDC) Cooperative Development Center, could be through the development of cooperative businesses, and in particular, real estate investment cooperatives.

Cooperatives, Ewert explained, are different from other business entity types, in that they are owned by members who democratically govern the organization. Ewert discussed a training she had attended, given by Leslie Watson, a successful real estate investment cooperative that is helping to revitalize a neighborhood of northeast Minneapolis, and how such a model might be used to help in revitalization of downtown Ronan.

The cooperative investment structure brings people together to invest in their own community, rather than waiting for moneyed interests from outside the area to purchase empty buildings and establish businesses.

“To have community members who are invested not just financially, but also because this is where they’re raising their families, where they maybe operate their own businesses, where they grew up or chose to live because they value what the community offers, it’s great to have that group of people driving the redevelopment process in their own community.”

In the Minneapolis example, the group purchased an old building that was considered “ugly” by the community, renovated it to bring it up to code and remove the undesirable façade, and made it a functioning space, which “might be hard for a tenant to do,” said Ewert. They raised the funds by their own equity they, as members, had put into it. They successfully brought in three tenants — a bike shop, a bakery, and a brewery (which is itself a cooperative). The lease payments return modest dividends to the cooperative members who invested in the building. The group has now purchased a second building and are working on renovating it next.

An investment cooperative has now formed in Montana, the Musselshell Rural Investment Cooperative in Roundup, with about fourteen individuals from the community as members, Ewert said. They have successfully purchased the historic school building after a new school was built, and are working to repurpose it for commercial and residential use. Discussion about the potential for a cooperative to purchase and renovate empty buildings in Ronan ensued.

Ewert is working to bring Leslie Watson to Ronan to offer a public training on cooperatives, including their value in community development, and the specific processes to develop a cooperative business entity. If there is a group of people interested in pursuing the concept further, they could work with Watson to develop the specific skills to move such a project forward. At this time, Watson’s visit is tentatively expected to occur in September.

For more information about cooperative business development, contact Brianna Ewert at LCCDC, (406) 676–5912.