HARTFORD, S.D. (AP) - Jesse Fonkert steers his way around a Hartford amid a revolution.
Not the political kind. Gone is the very public, nasty spat between elected leaders and citizens over Fonkert’s very job as chamber and economic development director, which he stepped into in 2016 after citizens voted to keep the position.
Now, Hartford is looking forward. The town is adding dozens upon dozens of homes across several developments, expanding the facilities at its sports complex and adding a brewery to its downtown - the first new building on Main Avenue in decades.
“It’s a great place to live, because everything you need is in town,” Fonkert told the Argus Leader .
The question now isn’t if Hartford is going to grow. It’s what the town will become. Is it now a bedroom community for Sioux Falls? Is that all Hartford is? If so, is that so bad? If so, must that be its future?
“I think 2019 could be a very pivotal year, from the growth side,” said Justin Eich, a local businessman who is president of the Hartford Area Development Foundation.
It could also be the year Hartford cements its course into the future.
Hartford is only a few years removed from some fairly epic political battles.
In 2015, the city council voted to eliminate a position meant to spur Hartford’s growth and development: the town’s economic development director.
The backlash effectively toppled the city’s leadership.
“I used to call it the G.O.B., the good old boy club,” said Eich. “They didn’t want change, they didn’t want to spend money, they were set in their ways. But there’s been enough of an influx of young families coming to town, so that it’s overtaken the G.O.B. mentality.”
The battle featured a special election, a rejected mayoral recall and a possibly falsified email. In a period of six months from 2015 to 2016, the mayor and several council members resigned.
It was over. Hiring Fonkert in 2016 was meant to turn the page.
“In the past we didn’t know we had the environment created that was pro-business and pro-residential,” said Mayor Jeremy Menning, a leading voice in the backlash against the effort to remove the economic development director position. “It was kind of, ’Take it like it comes, we’ll see what happens’ kind of approach.
“Over the last two years, we’ve tried to encourage creating an environment: Let’s be ready.”
New residents are shaping the town just by showing up. The town has added citizens at a steady pace. It’s population stands at about 3,200 residents, nearly double the population size of about 20 years ago.
It’s increasingly a young town. The median age is a touch over 30 years old. That bodes well in an era of rural population loss.
“There are young kids all over. That’s wonderful,” said Sheri Goebel, co-owner of the Sunshine Foods and president of the Hartford Area Chamber of Commerce.
Young families are moving to Hartford, drawn by relatively low housing prices, the small-town environment and a well-regarded, well-supported West Central School District. The town overwhelmingly voted this year to support boosting property taxes to increase spending for its schools.
“That’s our market,” said Fonkert, who himself is in his mid-20s. “We want the young families.”
Another daycare is planned to open, meaning Hartford will have about 10 daycares. Fonkert drives by the Hartford pool, which is increasingly at capacity. Competition for its use is so fierce, a schedule was hammered out to give all the daycares their time at the pool.
“The next update for the pool is to build another pool,” Eich deadpans. “They’ve done about all they can there.”
Open Hartford’s 31-page community guide. Just inside the front cover you’ll find a welcoming column from Menning.
“A bedroom community we are not!” Menning writes, as he extols Hartford’s business-friendly attitude and mix of local shopping and entertainment options (as any good mayor would).
But stand along Highway 38 out of Hartford at about 7:30 a.m., and you’ll experience the closest thing the town gets to rush hour.
“It’s almost like a mass exit in the morning and coming in and night,” Goebel said. The town doesn’t have exact numbers on how many of its residents work in Sioux Falls, about a 10-20 minute drive away, but the traffic tells the tale. It’s a lot.
Hartford and Sioux Falls are stretching their borders toward each other, pulled together by shared economic interests and seemingly inexorable growth.
“People used to think Hartford is so far from Sioux Falls. Obviously as Sioux Falls pushes further to the west, that gap gets closer,” said Eich. “That’s kind of the picture that was painted the last few years: ’Oh, that’s quite a ways out there.’”
The town’s proximity to the region’s largest job market in a growing Sioux Falls is a major selling point for Hartford, but so is its long-time status as its own place - a small town and proud of it.
Still, Sioux Falls is a giant magnet for workers from the area, who might be looking for a smaller-town lifestyle outside their work hours.
“A lot of people in this part of the state grew up in smaller towns and are used to that and want that for their kids,” said Menning. “That’s been huge, to have a place you can call home and it feels different. You’re not in a major metro, you know exactly who is next door, all of that.”
Hartford is seeking to strike a delicate balance. It wants to keep attracting young families, many who work in Sioux Falls, with its small-town environment that includes a wide range of shopping and dining options and is replete with community features such as a bike/walking trail, recreational complex and a pool.
At the same time, it hopes to pull in, say, a manufacturer or two that would employ several hundred workers to hike its tax base and diversify its local economy.
Hartford’s relatively steady pace of growth has helped, giving the town time to build out infrastructure and deliberate over what it wants to become, instead of being overwhelmed by growth.
That choice is becoming clear.
’If we’re going to be a ’bedroom community,’ we’re going to be the best bedroom community there is,” said Menning. “But we know we have a lot more to offer than that.”
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Information from: Argus Leader, http://www.argusleader.com
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