Full circle

In the 27 years I have been kicking around the Medford community and Taylor County in general, writing about the people and events I have watched the area slowly change.

Communities are living things. They go through periods of growth and decline and then growth again. About the only thing that is constant is the change. From the styles of the cars parked along the roads to the storefronts themselves, nowhere has this change been more apparent than in Medford’s downtown business district.

When I first came to town, there were still remnants of the downtown retail anchor stores which were hanging on despite competition from big boxes up on Hwy 13. At the time, Kmart was king of the roost for retail, but that proved to be a shooting star as changing shopping habits and poor decisions on the national level led to its sharp decline and eventual closure of the now-vacant store in the Medford Plaza.

Main Street, like so many others around the country, appeared to be floundering, like a fish tossed up on shore during a storm, slowly fading away. Fortunately for Medford there were those who would not allow the community “go gently into that good night.” But rather, to borrow some more from poet Dylan Thomas, choosing instead to “fight the dying of the light.”

There were many, both in the business community and in local government, who thought this was a futile effort and that those who dreamed of bringing the downtown back were a bit soft in the head from having been dropped too many times as an infant.

In fits and starts, things slowly began to change in the downtown. New businesses opened their doors. Some lasted while others failed for as many reasons as there are dandelions in the fields outside of town.

Through it, people continued to dream and persevere. They sought opportunities and made their own. Sleepless nights were had and tough choices made.

Still they hung on. Over time, new people came and brought with them new ideas and new resources. They not so much dreamed about restoring Main Street to its imagined past glory they remembered through the eyes of when they were children, but instead looked at the bones and framework of the area and looked at what it could become.

The retail marketplace is not the same as it was 50 years ago, nor will it be the same 50 years from now. There will be new storefronts, new faces and new ideas in the never-ending cycle.

On Monday morning, I was sitting at a solid wooden restaurant table in a space that for most of my time here in Medford was were I could have bought tires or had my vehicle serviced. I was talking with Marilyn Frank who has made her mark in Medford through the success she has had in running a restaurant and gathering place out of what had been the city’s old fire station.

I was talking to Marilyn for a story that will be running in a few weeks when her new venture has its longawaited opening.

I looked around the room seeing the merger of the new and the old. A commingling of generations where one generation’s utility is another’s centerpiece. Dale and Ann Baumann, who own the building and whose dream has made the new and reclaimed space a reality, should be commended for their vision and dedication. I would say commitment, but chances are that if Ann had known what was in store when they started the project she would likely would have had Dale committed.

With the dream so close to becoming reality, it is impossible not to share in the palpable excitement. Nor is it possible to tour through the truly amazing transformation of the Brucker Building at the corner of Main St. and Division St. and not be blown away by all that has happened to turn it from an eyesore into a gem which likewise carries that fusion of the old and the new. Doug and John Gasek share that vision of Medford. Rather than bulldozing its past in favor of a shiny chrome-clad future, they embrace Medford’s past and future.

Medford has been, hopefully always will be, a place where people come to work and to play. It is also a place for people to dream and for visionaries to bring about exciting new beginnings from what others wrote off as dead-ends.

As visionaries in Gilman and Rib Lake look at what their downtowns could be, the future in Taylor County is a bright one.

Brian Wilson is News Editor at The Star News.