Sidney, NE—Once Down, Now Booming

One of the participants at the NMPP Annual Meeting last week was Gary Person, who has been with the city of Sidney, NE for 27 years as city manager and economic development director. This town of 6,800 people is a great example of how a community can transform themselves and why they were chosen as one of my agurbs® in BoomtownUSA.

Forty years ago virtually all of the jobs in this far western Nebraska town were controlled by the federal government or large companies. Major employers were an army ammunition depot, a minuteman missile base, oil and gas exploration, and the railroad. Big employers can be great, but when they close down it is devastating. Gary told me, “We have worked very, very hard for many years to build something special here after losing about 75% of our private sector jobs in the late 1960s and 1970s. Those jobs were controlled by outside forces.”

By depending upon local entrepreneurs rather than the big, outside employers Sidney has transformed themselves. Gary, “We have tripled our economy in the past 15 years.” The most famous local entrepreneurs are Dick and Jim Cabela who started the world famous Cabela’s retail chain after a Furniture Mart trip to Chicago. But, there are several other local entrepreneurs who have also had a huge impact upon the local work force. Gary calls it one of the entrepreneurial capitals of small town America.

From what he’s told me, I’d have to agree. I’m hoping to get there this fall to see for myself. I’m featuring Sidney in a new talk I’m developing entitled, “Hometown Entrepreneurs: Your New Paradigm Shift in Economic Development.”