The Bowman County Development Corp. wants to hear local business owners.
By BRYCE MARTIN
Pioneer Editor | [email protected]
Last week Bowman Main Street business owners were given the opportunity to voice their concerns and suggestions over breakfast.
Returning to a previously used format to engage local businesses, the Bowman County Development Corp. brought back its popular Eggs and Issues forum on Feb. 11 at the Sweetwater Golf Course.
More than 30 people, mainly consisting of local business owners, gathered with the sole purpose of discussing ways in which the BCDC could further help revitalize the downtown business district in Bowman.
The dialogue was largely positive, helping the BCDC to discern its path to enhancing local business.
“We still have a downtown to be proud of,” said Duane Bowman, president of the BCDC Board of Directors, who helped lead the discussion along with Teran Doerr, director of the BCDC.
The majority of concerns, initially raised by comment cards handed out to the audience, indicated that the BCDC needed to have more communication with downtown businesses.
The BCDC works alongside the Bowman Area Chamber of Commerce, Bowman County Tax and Tourism and Small Business Development — each located under one roof in an office on the northeast corner of Main Street and Divide Avenue in Bowman.
Bowman said it was the goal of the office to visit existing local businesses at least twice a month, but that’s a large undertaking considering the county has at least 400 businesses in varying sizes.
Dave Smolnikar, co-owner of Dale’s Clothing and Custom Embroidery in Bowman, was surprised to hear the BCDC discuss its available programs for local businesses, such as its interest buy-down and micro loan programs.
“A lot of people probably don’t know what those are,” Smolnikar told Doerr.
The BCDC’s micro loan program matches up to $5,000 for a local business. JaBBr’s Family Restaurant recently utilized the loan to purchase a new point-of-sale system.
Another concern was the presence of vacant storefronts along Main Street giving a feeling that business is slowly tapering off.
Tana Smolnikar, co-owner of Dale’s, shared her experience of a customer who had lived in the area for three years and not knowing there was a clothing store on Main Street.
“He had never shopped downtown,” she said.
A big issue facing the reported slowdown in local business is people going outside of the local area to make purchases, a predicament the BCDC and Chamber of Commerce has repeatedly faced.
But Warren Flath, owner of Western Frontier Insurance in Bowman, lent a differing perspective to the situation near the close of the meeting.
“Our expectations are high. We’re not Dickinson; we think we should be,” he said. But Bowman’s population is somewhat prohibitive in that aspect, he added.
Flath suggested perhaps there isn’t an emerging crisis facing downtown and that goals shouldn’t be made unobtainable since the population is relatively stagnant.
“We are a lot better than most,” Flath said of the Bowman area.
Doerr summed up the breakfast meeting as an effort to start communication between the BCDC and local business.
The Eggs and Issues meeting came on the cusp of the BCDC’s annual meeting, held Wednesday, at which time the organization presented its annual report on the state of local business and the BCDC’s role.