RIVER FALLS — Building the City of River Falls did not happen in a day, did not happen with one lone decision and has been a process. According to City Administrator Scot Simpson and Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation Regional Economic Development Director Ray French, the city has stacked up well with other municipalities, and there are a lot of reasons for that.

“We didn’t grow through one big moment,” Simpson said. “We grew through a series of public and private investment decisions.”

Simpson and French spoke at an Issues that Impact Us event in City Hall on April 28, each presenting about the things that have set River Falls apart and how it can keep taking steps forward.

Simpson emphasized the decision-making process in the city, going from strategies, to decisions, to investments, to outcomes. Having the university in the city has provided a great starting point in River Falls, but the city staff aims to ensure it is a building block rather than the entire puzzle.

“We’re not just going to take our golden goose so to speak, or our golden falcon, and just live off of that. There needs to be more,” Simpson said. “We’ve done that by creating efficient land use. We’re known for strong but fair and consistent standards, especially when it comes to environmental.”

The city’s development mindset aims at taking people’s ideas for economic development and making the necessary tweaks to create a project that can be approved. Simpson said the standards are clear, which allows businesses to know what they are getting into.

“We’re always talking with staff of how do we get to ‘yes,’” Simpson said. “Somebody brought us their dreams, their hopes, their plan, they’ve all got it worked out. They figured it out at Thanksgiving. Their brother-in-law told them it was the perfect plan; it’s going to work great. Then we have to try to get to ‘yes’ with that plan.”

Getting a yes does not mean the city says yes to all projects and businesses; it is more about making concepts positive for the residents in the city. That approach has helped many local businesses spark up along with larger businesses like Starbuck’s, Dunkin’ Donuts and Chipotle being attracted to open a franchise location in the city.

River Falls chose growth as a strategy, and Simpson displayed charts showing steady increases to both population and assessed values.

“We’re not chasing growth, we’re building it,” Simpson said. “It’s intentional, it’s forward thinking, it takes a fair amount of strategy… We have gotten a pretty clear vision from the community over time of what their expectations are, so that gives us a really good position to negotiate from.”

Due to an abundance of community input residents have provided, city staff has felt they can negotiate on the public’s behalf. Short-term decisions are easy, but city staff has emphasized a focus on making long-term decisions that benefit the city for decades.

One attendee asked Simpson about the city’s vision for retail, parking and more downtown. Simpson said there is no set target for which types of businesses establish themselves downtown, but that a thriving downtown is more important than an excessive amount of parking.

“We talk a lot about either having a parking problem or downtown problem. I’d rather have a parking problem,” Simpson said.
French spoke about grants, opportunities and incentives that can and have benefitted River Falls business owners. One example was the community development investment grant, which was given to the River Falls Theater about eight years ago and Bodhi Studios more recently.

“These are grants for downtown development projects that create destinations that support that local economy that’s going to give people a reason to come to downtown and support something that’s going to help refresh downtown,” French said.

French said investing in the downtown area allows it to flourish, and when it flourishes, more businesses will want to set their roots there.

“We’re not the workforce agency, we’re not the housing agency, we’re not the childcare agency. We are the economic development agency which does touch all of those areas, so we have to be supportive and work together with our other agencies to share what programs could be built to support businesses,” French said.

Another grant French discussed was for talent recruitment, attracting people to move to the state.

“River Falls as a community is a leader in the region for being collaborative, for [development], being easy to work with, being a place that businesses want to be,” French said. “Not everywhere is, so I’d say keep that reputation, keep being easy to work with.”

Simpson spoke to the importance of keeping up with affordable housing needs to attract members of the workforce. He said the city is wrapping up its third housing needs assessment in recent years, and rather than pointing fingers, they want to find the root cause. In the meantime, the full focus is on minimizing the issue.

“We haven’t let our lack of knowledge of understanding exactly how we can influence it stop us from doing things we think probably influence it,” Simpson said. “We continue to work on tax credit projects because we think that helps. We think density helps. I really mean think, we don’t know. This is all still evolving.”