Mainstreet Radio’s Leif Enger visits the central Minnesota town of Crosby, which is having a comeback of sorts…from prospering former mining town to bustling “antique” town. Those windows now contain 40 antique stores. Locals are hoping the recovery expands to other businesses for community.
In the 1980s, a tourist driving through Crosby in early summer would've seen a main street filled with murals with fishing and nature scenes covering the windows of downtown buildings. The chamber of commerce had the murals painted because so many of the buildings were empty, and nobody wanted the tourists to think Crosby was a dying town.
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LEIF ENGER: Crosby and its immediate neighbor Ironton, began as mining towns on the Cuyuna Iron Range. The mines stopped operating in the early '60s, but longtime residents like Jeanette Smith remember a noisy, hearty, hard-working downtown.
JEANETTE SMITH: There were at least five grocery stores on Main Street, at least three or four hardware stores. At one time. There were two banks in Crosby and one bank in Ironton. There was a theater in Crosby, the people's theater. And there was one in Ironton.
LEIF ENGER: As mining declined, the communities that grew up around it began to fail. The region's other industries-- tourism, forest products-- couldn't grow fast enough to replace the disappearing jobs. For a while, Crosby was home to the Scorpion Snowmobile company, which closed when that industry took a dive in the mid-70s.
JEANETTE SMITH: It was depressing to see the empty stores on Main Street. This made it feel a little desolate. It made it seem as if an era had passed. And we were waiting to see what was coming.
LEIF ENGER: A passing era brought dark times to downtown Crosby, so it's ironic a fascination with the past has helped to start revival. Because what dominates the business district, filling storefront after storefront, are antiques, the preserved and the decrepit, the classy, the cheesy, the bargains, and the probably not bargains.
Kate Johnson owns the Den of Antiquity.
KATE JOHNSON: The building that I originally was in was vacant, and the building that I'm in now was vacant. It was becoming a dying town, I think. And once the antique stores got going, it just sort of blossomed. And of course, the real estate taxes went up, which is always a bummer. In fact, we bought this building seven years ago, maybe eight years ago. The taxes were $400. And now, because it's developed and fixed up and everything is cute, the taxes last year were close to 4,000.
LEIF ENGER: While no one claims a street full of antique stores signifies complete recovery, that rise in property taxes is probably the most telling evidence of a comeback in progress besides, of course, the lively look of Main Street itself. Once Johnson and her husband had established their shop, they bought the building next door and began renting space to other dealers.
Word got around. Now, in former drug stores and former hardwares and former mortuaries, more than 40 antique merchants serve a determined and recurrent clientele.
SPEAKER 1: Today, my wife is looking for an oak end table of some kind that it can't be too high. It can't be too small. It can't be too large. It's got to be just right.
SPEAKER 2: Well, we both collect milk glass, and so we bought several pieces of milk glass, tinware, or a piece of that.
SPEAKER 1: A lot of antique stores up in this area. We come and make the loop through Aiken and through Crosby and then back over to Brainerd. You just really have to shop.
LEIF ENGER: The state tourism office says towns near popular resort areas, in this case Brainerd, are benefiting from a trend toward more diverse vacations. People are less likely to hole up in a cabin for a week and more likely to explore nearby communities. Kennedy Smith, director of the nonprofit National Main Trade Center in Washington, DC, says another trend is also helping small towns.
KENNEDY SMITH: People are spending less time at shopping malls now than they did 10 or 15 years ago. They yearn for something that's a little bit more personal, and that reflects something about who their community is rather than the impersonality of a store that you could find in New York or Chicago or Los Angeles or Winona or any place in America. People are looking for something that's a little more unique and special, and it's beginning to snowball.
LEIF ENGER: Crosby's Main Street revival is still quite seasonal. Most of the antique dealers close up during the winter, but a corresponding industrial recovery away from downtown has spurred hopes the community will once again support a wider variety of businesses. Wood products and manufacturing have grown hundreds of jobs in recent years, so fewer locals have to commute elsewhere to work. Longtime resident Jeanette Smith.
JEANETTE SMITH: I would like to see another grocery store. I would like to see a bookstore in town. There's a need for that. I would like to see a little coffee shop where people would stop and spend a little time. I would like to see a little theater in town.
LEIF ENGER: Kennedy Smith of the National Main Street Center suggests at least some of this may come in time, but at a price. When a downtown hits bottom, she says, businesses that need lots of space and cheap rent, like antique or furniture stores, are often the first sign of impending recovery. As the recovery continues, as dealers draw more customers and reinvest their profits, tax and rent bills rise. And when other year-round businesses begin eyeing Main Street locations, some antique merchants may find they've improved themselves right out of work.
Leif Enger, Main Street Radio.