Save The Hotel, Save the World!

The Hotel -- Grand Avenue, Spencer, Iowa

You're headed south on Grand Avenue, stopped at the 7th Street light. You see a squad car behind you, and try to remember if your tags are up to date. You glance to your right and see The Hotel, lonely but hopeful, like a nerdy but statuesque tall girl wondering, with the slightest smile dimpling her over-blushed cheekbones, if the tall boy with glasses across the room will work up the courage to ask her to dance.

Forget the dance analogy...do you ever think about The Hotel and whether she's still desirable, still viable, still a shell of potential?

Has it?

What if it's not?

I'm thinking we need some Common Ground.

We need each other, and we need everyone to get through this scary economic time. Did I say that already? We need each others' intellect, spirit, generosity and courage. We need to face our fear together.

The fear that we'll fail. That when we emerge from the drastic changes, reductions, loss and reversals that this economy will bring -- and I know you all share my common sense view that this recession will not cease in a few weeks or months but is something that will stick to us for the long haul with ripples and after-effects -- that we will have failed to hold the community together.

We won't fail. The only failure is in giving up. That's not who we are here in Spencer, Clay County or the Iowa Lakes region.

I did decide to open myself up for mocking, ridicule and guffaws in hopes of finding some people who could appreciate a vision, who realize that we cannot proceed with what's worked in the past -- we need new ideas.

Earlier, I mentioned Common Ground. What if The Hotel was the center of our community, a single building where everything that brought us together to not only survive but prosper and grow into the future?

No, no, no. I love the Spencer Chamber. I love the Lakes Area Cooridor. Love the County Supervisors, the School Board (don't have to agree with them to love them), the City Council and the Sheriff's department (even though I wish they'd stop pulling my husband over).

Common Ground -- Spencer @ The Hotel. That's the name of my vision. The Hotel will house:'

1. An entrepreneurial incubator like Social Fusion in San Francisco. How many people who've lost their jobs recently (or less recently) would love to start a business, but lack office or work space, a support group, mentoring, and resources.

The Social Fusion -- Spencer section would support socially conscious, community-sustaining (and hopefully job-creating) ventures with office space, shared copier, high speed Internet, conference room and receptionist. We'd encourage SCORE or RSVP to have a volunteer business person based at The Hotel to mentor, help with business plans, etc.

Social Fusion -- Spencer would host seminars, lunches, networking opportunities, and being in proximity to other beginning entrepreneurs would create natural networking opportunities and possible business partnerships. Social Fusion -- Spencer would have a website and publish a newsletter with ads from the Social Fusion businesses.

2. A nonprofit coop like Common Ground -- Athens Georgia. Any nonprofit that helped develop cooperation, community, sustainability could have meetings at the Hotel and have the Common Ground receptionist answer their phones, make available their literature, etc. I'm thinking of SPACE, a local growers' coop, Food not Bombs, possibly interfaith organizations -- any independently run resource that not only reaches out to help people in need but provides those people the opportunity to give back as an integral part of our community.

This nonprofit coop would include an arts component. It is difficult to overestimate how much arts helps build community and create jobs. Beyond artists, musicians, actors and curators, the arts puts electricians, construction people, computer pros, journalists, designers, and suppliers to work.

The arts coop would sell the work of local artisans and provide rehearsal and performance space for performance artists and studio space for visual artists all in one place. The front desk of The Hotel would sell CDs from local musicians, books from local authors, and certain pieces of art or craft from other local artisans, and create initiatives to encourage new art.

3. Common Ground -- Spencer @ The Hotel would also be the headquarters for The Fuller Center for Housing - Iowa Lakes. For details on this housing ministry, please visit http://fullercenteriowalakes.blogspot.co... The Fuller Center for Housing was started by the family that founded Habitat for Humanity. FCH has the same great mission as Habitat with the added mission of making home repairs for those who need it and setting up an affordable payment plan for the family to repay construction costs over time -- those repayments go into a revolving fund for the next project.

The Fuller Center for Housing - Iowa Lakes is having a spaghetti dinner with live music and auction at First Lutheran Church in West Okoboji on May 8 from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. Rumor has it that venerable singer/songwriter Alan Morphew will be headlining the evening but those rumors have yet to be confirmed.

4. A local affiliate of Mental Health America. MHA provides information, referral, publications and PR campaigns and community involvement to promote good mental health for all people. Disclosure: I am in the very early stages of starting this local affiliate of Mental Health America.

5. A homeless crashplace for those in Spencer with no place to stay. I've not figured out why there's a homeless shelter in Spirit Lake and none in Spencer. This is only a nugget of an idea, in the spirit that no common ground is possible without considering the neediest in our society.

I don't have any statistics on how many homeless people are in Spencer and who they are. I'm just saying this economy is almost certainly going to find the least economically sound among us kicked out of their shelter. I don't think our vision has the exact capacity to feed, nurture and ultimately help redirect people who are homeless, but maybe through the local food initiative, we'd help direct the hungry toward food. Perhaps by volunteering with our resident businesses and organizations, they'd become part of the network and find paying work to do.

Perhaps being a part of the artist culture, the most down and farthest out would find inspiration and healing.

And just maybe, by finding Common Ground with some of the rest of us, they'd feel less isolated.

Yes. Yes it is. Thank you for asking. It would be completely, over the top foolish for me to believe I could pull this off by myself.

Fortunately, I already have some amazing people in my corner, I have inspiration and faith from its primary source, and I live in a community called Clay County, Iowa, where we choose action.

6. I'm a mostly-out-of-work writer and of course I'd like to also start a publishing company in The Hotel. There are a couple of weekly newsmag models out there we could make local, or we could collect writings on a theme from local writers and create and promote books we create on Lulu. This part is also just a fragment of an idea.

I realize what's standing in the path from vision to reality is about a million dollars -- a half million to buy the hotel and another half million to fix it and I know absolutely nothing about real estate development.

I can only believe that we share Common Ground with one or more angels.

Save The Hotel -- Save Spencer.