REBUILT: Community leaders are confident that the Wadena 2.0 visioning process helped avoid some of the pains experienced by other disaster-stricken communities.

It was barely a week after the 2010 tornado devastated parts of Wadena and the surrounding towns, but the debate over replacing what had been lost was already in full swing.

The high school was ruined beyond repair. The city’s community center and the area’s only indoor ice rink were also out of commission. The county fairgrounds sustained heavy damage, as did an estimated 234 homes and 22 businesses.

For many disaster-stricken towns and cities, the rebuilding process can pit immediate needs against long-term community planning. Wadena was no exception. But a collaborative process put Wadena on the road to recovery in record time.

On the one hand, Wadena-Deer Creek school officials had to get going in order to have a new high school by the fall of 2012. Hockey parents—a vocal and powerful group in a town passionately devoted to their favorite sport—wanted their kids to be able to skate on indoor ice by the winter.

Others viewed the tornado as an opportunity to collaborate on an improved vision of Wadena’s future that would guide its growth and make the rebuilt community institutions better than before. “It was literally a blank slate for rebuilding and redevelopment,” said City Council member Don Niles. “We had a real opportunity for collaboration without the limitations of the previous buildings.”

Niles became chairman of Wadena 2.0, a civic group dedicated to creating a common vision for recovery and rebuilding that incorporated public and private community stakeholders. With help from the Initiative Foundation, Wadena 2.0 began the process of building that vision.

“Taking the time to do planning has been pretty popular with the public,” Niles said. “There were some tensions between the desire to put things back together as quickly as possible and the desire to make the most of a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to rethink things.”

With support from the Initiative Foundation, Wadena chose the latter. In addition to setting up a disaster relief fund for Wadena that raised over $100,000, the Initiative Foundation allocated $75,000 to long-term relief efforts, said Kathy Gaalswyk, president of the Initiative Foundation.

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The Initiative Foundation and Minnesota Design Team helped leaders create a plan that. . . stitched things back together more efficiently and rationally.

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“Every place in a rural community has history or personal significance attached to it, so it’s very difficult to say anything positive about a disaster that destroys those places,” she said. “However, the Wadena tornado provided an opportunity to paint a community on an empty canvas, and our goal was to get a lot of smart, creative people involved in the planning.”

Creating a Vision

Arriving at a consensus about the town’s rebuilding priorities was not easy for Wadena 2.0. “In community planning of any kind, there are usually a million different ideas and they’re all good,” said Dan Frank, Initiative Foundation program manager for community development, who served on the group’s board. “Communities need to have an open process so that every person gets their voice heard. The large group gives input on what the highest priorities should be, and then it’s up to smaller task forces and leaders to bring the ideas to action.”

One of the first decisions the group faced was whether or not to immediately replace the indoor ice arena that was part of the city’s community center. Insurance money was available to rebuild it and some hockey parents wanted to move fast, Frank said. But other stakeholders—including the city and school district— hoped a rebuilt community center and high school could be integrated so that facilities could be shared.

DON NILES (with Initiative Foundation president Kathy Gaalswyk): “Because of the amount of participation, the town has a plan that has the major stakeholders and the public behind it.”

The city’s decision to wait on rebuilding and to instead provide outdoor ice for skaters didn’t satisfy everybody; some hockey families took out newspaper ads saying that rebuilding the ice arena should be the top priority. A few families even left the community.

But taking time to build a shared vision allowed Wadena 2.0 and the Initiative Foundation to bring in the Minnesota Design Team, a nonprofit volunteer group of architects, engineers and city planners who work with communities to build a vision of their future.

Because the design team usually takes four to six months to research a community, they initially didn’t think the Wadena project was feasible. The group made an emergency visit to Wadena in October and attended a community potluck dinner put on by Wadena 2.0 that nearly 300 community members attended.

“We’ve never had that amount of participation and engagement from a community before,” said Mike Lamb, a Minneapolis architect and Minnesota Design Team member. “We walked in and they were saying ‘Let’s get started.’”

The group had worked with other Minnesota communities recovering from floods and tornadoes in the past, including East Grand Forks, St. Peter and Rushford. Wadena was one of the most motivated communities the group has encountered, according to Lamb.

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The Wadena tornado provided an opportunity to paint a community on an empty canvas.

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After a weekend of group discussions, brainstorming and meeting Wadena citizens, the Initiative Foundation and the Minnesota Design Team created a plan that emphasized sharing space and facilities, creating public open space, providing room for modest housing growth and “stitched things back together more efficiently and rationally,” according to Lamb.

Coming Together

The Wadena 2.0 group took the design team’s recommendations and brought them to the individual stakeholders— the city, county, school district, economic development authority, employers and community support groups—who fleshed the plans out, Niles said.

The city and school then collaborated to plan a rebuilt high school and community center that would be connected by a skyway instead of a road.

“(Connecting them) will maximize the use of both facilities by the general public in Wadena and get us the biggest bang for the public dollar,” said Dean Uselman, executive director of the Wadena Economic Development Authority and the city’s Planning and Zoning department. “Now, the weight room in the wellness center and the walking track in the high school gym will be connected and both will be available to the public.”

In addition, a proposal for the community center calls for a warm-water therapeutic pool that would be leased to Tri-County Health Care for their use, but also open to the public at other hours. The tentative agreement depends on the Minnesota Legislature’s willingness to provide public bonding dollars to help fund the $19 million center’s construction.

	PLANNING PROGRESS: Rebuilding recommendations include replacing the collection of small fairground buildings with with a multipurpose building that could be used as an event center.

The plan calls for other improvements as well. The rebuilt ice arena and two gymnasiums in the community center could be combined with four gymnasiums planned for the new high school in order to attract regional high school or amateur sports tournaments.

“Those tournaments can be a benefit to the local economy because they bring people in from around the state,” said Niles.

Groundbreaking on the community center could take place this fall, depending on the outcome at the Legislature. The high school is already under construction.

Other Minnesota Design Team recommendations that are in the works include replacing the collection of small fairground buildings that were knocked down with a single multi-purpose building seating up to 600 people that could be used as an event center.

“We just had a collection of six or seven small buildings before, with no place to hold an event,” said Uselman. “One large building would give us more flexibility.”

A significant effort is also underway to convince federal authorities to rebuild and extend a rail spur to serve the city’s business park, which is now the home of Leaf River Ag Products, a longtime mainstay of downtown Wadena.

The company relocated to the business park after sustaining serious tornado damage to its former location, across from the high school, according to Uselman, who added that the company would like access to rail lines to ship its livestock feed, equipment and other agricultural products and supplies.

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"We’ve got a pretty good plan for all these elements. But we still need to get some help to make them happen."
- Dean Uselman, Wadena Economic Development Authority

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The city is also renewing its plea to state and federal authorities to widen the only two-lane stretch of U.S. Highway 10 in the United States to four lanes, since several of the buildings along the current Wadena section are no longer there because of the tornado.

“We’ve got a pretty good plan for all these elements,” said Uselman. “But we still need to get some help to make them happen.”

Avoiding Pitfalls

Putting together a vision of a community that’s different from the way it was before a disaster can, if not handled correctly, create resentment and hostility, said Chris Hallum, the mayor of Rushford, a southeastern Minnesota town on the Root River.

Hallum should know. He was elected two years after a 2007 flood submerged most of the town under water and caused nearly $50 million in damage to the town of 2,350.

Hallum came to office on a wave of discontent with how the recovery was being handled by City Hall, as well as decisions about where to apply $17 million in state flood recovery funds. City leaders spent limited funds on new infrastructure and rebuilding the municipal liquor store while existing roads and services were still in bad shape.

SHARED SPACE: The city and school collaborated to plan a new high school and community center that would be connected by a skyway instead of a road, thereby maximizing the use of both buildings by the general public.

Business owners complained that the terms of state disaster loans distributed through the city were not favorable, and Hallum acknowledged the city’s purchase of 23 acres north of town to build a business park for future growth when existing roads and infrastructure were hurting further inflamed tensions.

In addition, the decision to invest in the business park as well as rebuild the municipal liquor store gave people the impression that city leaders were not looking out for those who were hurt the most by the flood.

“Your number one obligation is to help the citizens you have, not the ones you hope to have in the future and I think some people lost sight of that,” said Hallum.

Niles is confident that the Wadena 2.0 visioning process helped avoid some of the pains experienced by other distaster-stricken communities. The work that so many Wadena residents put into the rebuilding effort— from planning to planting trees—will make it a better community than it was before.

Those future improvements, experts agree, are thanks to strong community leadership and engaged citizens. “We had three core principles from the start: collaboration, openness and accountability,” said Niles. “Because of the amount of participation we had, I think we have a plan that has the major stakeholders and the public behind it. I think we’re making the most of the situation.” IQ