Thanks to Tim Manners for a heads up on this wonderful article by John Ritter in USA Today on small towns trying new ways to attract families and small business owners.

Link: USATODAY.com – Towns offer free land to newcomers.

The web site www.kansasfreeland.com is one wrinkle in a new economic development strategy sweeping across rural America. The goal is to reverse decades of population loss from the decline of small family farms and businesses, expand the tax base, keep schools from closing and preserve a way of life. "I guess we’re so stubborn that we’re not going to let our town die," says Steve Piper, mayor of Marquette, Kansas….

Economic gardening is affordable and can unite a town.
In three years, Valley County, Neb., (population 4,647) has graduated 70 from a leadership class; set up an endowment with $1.2 million willed by a local couple; and hired a business development coordinator. Ord, the county seat, has made seven small-business loans from a 1-cent sales-tax fund.

A wealthy alum living in Arizona flies in to teach a class on growing entrepreneurs. A graduate came home from Lincoln to start an irrigation-well firm. Another plans a local dental practice. The county must attract 27% of its high school’s average graduating class of 67 to stabilize the population by 2010.

It won’t be easy. "They need an economic opportunity. That’s what we’ve been struggling with," says Bethanne Kunz, the county’s economic development director.

Ingenuity is the mother of…

Economic development directors like Ellsworth County’s Anita Hoffhines are a new breed of small-town civic booster giving an intensely personal touch to business recruitment. They’re willing to try almost anything — Internet radio marketing is her latest ploy — if it benefits their towns.

They know small towns will never appeal to the masses. They know high school seniors such as Dustin Engelken and Simon Orozco likely won’t return. Dustin is drawn to cities and wants a Foreign Service career. Simon, headed to Harvard University next fall, leans toward medical research.

So Hoffhines targets the few who are comfortable in small places where everybody knows everybody else’s business, where an entrepreneur can set up shop and grow. "If you want to be creative in Silicon Valley, the cost is very high," she says. "If you come to central Kansas, you can be very creative and have very low risk in comparison. And the quality of the people here is awesome."

Hmm…sounds like Houston….which has a better selection of restaurants.