An Agurb® Moving from Bricks to Clicks

\ Mason City, Iowa is an old industrial city of 29,000 in north central Iowa. I first visited it in the early 80s and often stayed overnight in the town in the late 80s and early 90s. It always impressed me as being a very nice town. The people were friendly. The yards were well kept. It radiated a certain charm. But, I hadn’t been back since 1992.

I was surprised when I first drove back into town after 12 years by the expansion of retail in the town, which was incredible. There were half dozen new big box retailers, numerous smaller stores and a handful of new auto dealers at the main entrance to the city. Mason City’s unique downtown also seemed to be doing well.

I’d picked it as an agurb® for my book and I knew I’d made a good pick when I saw how Mason City has expanded and diversified their job base. Several of the old line industries that helped make the city the largest in the northern 1/3 of Iowa are long gone like the Armour packing plant and the brick plants, but their two cement plants are still going strong. They’ve added to that base with food plants like Kraft (Jell-O pudding cups); ConAgra (hot dogs, bacon and ham production); and Cargill (liquid eggs primarily for McDonalds). They’ve got some local entrepreneurial manufacturers, a new $400 million power plant, and a new $56 million ethanol plant that will use 15 million bushel of corn per year. There is a good diversity in their industrial base.

And Mason City is moving from their old bricks industries into a “clicks society” where knowledge trumps brawn. They are leveraging their strengths as regional financial, insurance and medical centers to create more white collar and high tech jobs. Their location along the interstates I35 and Avenue of the Saints (St. Louis to St. Paul) also offers them some opportunities in the growing distribution industry.