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What happened to North Iowa Connect?

Editorial by Matt Marquardt –

It was formed over three years ago by the North Iowa Corridor to engage youthful business people, but it didn’t leave a lasting impression.

This sub-group of the Corridor was called North Iowa Connect, said to be the brainchild of Corridor President and CEO Brent Willett and Mayor Eric Bookmeyer, even though neither attended many of the group’s events, which consisted mainly of “youthful” people meeting at local drinking establishments and mingling over alcoholic beverages.

Eric Bookmeyer prefers beer, cigarettes and younger people with fresh ideas.
Eric Bookmeyer prefers beer, cigarettes and younger people with fresh ideas.

In fact, just as Connect was ramping up, Mr. Willett and Mr. Bookmeyer (a Corridor board member) were seen more than once at the Other Place Bar, now closed and overgrown with weeds and debris, sharing beers and looking deeply into each other’s eyes, concocting what they surely thought was a master plan to bring new membership to the Corridor – you have to pay dues to belong, you know. At about the time the pair was spotted together, Mr. Bookmeyer was tossed from the Other Place, so he and Willett held their planning sessions elsewhere, quite likely at Eric’s basement – his “man cave” I am told – where he is said to drink beer after beer, pausing only to smoke cigarettes, sometimes up to a pack in one evening.

The North Iowa Connect started out initially with about a dozen or so people showing up at this location or that, once or twice a month, in spring of 2011.  An email list of youthful people was created, and that list of people would be contacted periodically.  A website was created, too, called NorthIowaConnect.com, asking young people with fresh ideas to join. This was the same rhetoric Mr. Bookmeyer espoused to an older Mason City woman in her 50’s – a long-time volunteer – soon after he helped form North Iowa Connect. He was on a roll with his youthful person crusade, and refused to re-appoint her to a city board, telling her he preferred “younger people with fresh ideas.”

It didn’t take more than 12-18 months before Mr. Willett’s and Mr. Bookemeyer’s fresh idea was kaput. People stopped coming to Connect events, and the person in charge fell asleep at the wheel. It became a waste of time, and fluttered away; no more events were ever scheduled.  The website is gone, too; it now displays a bowl of flowers without many English words (you will find “宇都宮で全身脱毛で絶対オススメできるサロンを徹底調査!” at the top of the website, now).

It’s a real shame that Mr. Bookmeyer and Mr. Willett failed so miserably with the North Iowa Connect.  Obviously, we need small business people to thrive here in North Iowa, and engaging young people is never a bad idea.  However, the economic realities we face here may have been their biggest obstacle.

Enjoy your new life in Des Moines, Mr. Willett.
Enjoy your new life in Des Moines, Mr. Willett.

Perhaps many of the would-be members of North Iowa Connect, those 18-35-year-olds they strove to bring in – got too busy trying to survive by working at jobs brought by the Corridor that pay $9.50 an hour. After all, you gotta work a lot of hours at that rate of pay to make ends meet, and time and money for meeting at the bar may not fit into that lifestyle.  Perhaps younger people were too broke to attend, just couldn’t “connect” with the Corridor, or the group was so poorly operated and publicized that it died on the vine.  Perhaps more savvy business leaders – with real-world experience – would have done better.

Either way, North Iowa Connect is gone now, just as Mr. Willett is.  He, perhaps, is doing as so  many other youthful, industrious, smart people have done over the the years: Left North Iowa and moved onto greener pastures in Des Moines.

If only North Iowa Connect had succeeded… perhaps it would have kept Mr. Willett, himself, here.

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