Building America website holds vision of small cities across nation

Violet McDonald, Democrat Copy Editor

It took the vision of small town folks to meet a need of small towns across the nation, and now it's up to those small towns to take that vision to its fullest potential.

"Building America takes all these small cities and gives them a fighting chance," said Kerry Lauricella, executive director of the National Association of Cities and councilman of Harahan, La.

According to Lauricella, the grassroots economic development program now known as Building America began as a one-page spreadsheet in the small town of Harahan. Lauricella said the small town lost a supermarket, a loss that drastically affected the local economy.

At that point the council decided to get together and put the city's information on a spreadsheet and use it to spread the word to draw new businesses to the area.

"That spreadsheet became the largest website in the world," Lauricella said.

In a two-month period, the website went from 68 municipal members to 1,000. So what is it that attracted so many small towns to become members of the Building America website?

Simplicity for one. Live Oak is already on the www.buildingamerica.org site, but the information at this point is sparse. For the web page that houses Live Oak's information to grow, the city of Live Oak, businesses, churches, schools and the people will have to get involved and provide the information.

The National Association of Cities, however, has already built the page and has it hosted on the site. If the city were to choose to become a member, a connection to the world and the local community becomes a real possibility.

These days it appears two goals are fighting against each other - world competition and marketing and local orientation. Building America seemingly answers the need to meet the world while at the same time staying true to the local community.

The site can be accessed for information about the community. Everything from civic organizations to churches, festivals and local elected officials is made available on the site. In fact, all non-profit organizations can have their own pages free of charge.

"The only people that give any money are the people who stand to make money," Lauricella said.

And those businesses that choose to have a page on the site pay a meager $175 a year.

"We're not in the business of building websites," Lauricella explained. "We're in the business of recreating the community, taking a snapshot. . .and pulling the schools, churches, civic groups, etc. together."

But the original goal that got Building America started was to attract new businesses to the small town of Harahan.

"The logic is Building America gives cities the ability to go to one central location and take a look at what is available," Lauricella said. "If an industry catches that it can see everything else going on in the city."

Lauricella said businesses spend a lot of money pre-qualifying cities to see if they will be friendly. The Building America site allows small towns to post desires for whatever type of business they are seeking.

The site is interactive, allowing the Chamber of Commerce, council member or economic development organization to answer questions about zoning, tax incentives, and that information links to every other city in the state of Florida seeking that business.

In addition, the site allows residents to interact with elected officials by submitting comments or questions to any of the officials or the departments within the city and get a response.

The site also offers the ability to link to existing sites already in operation by businesses or groups.

Building America is funded by national corporate sponsors, local businesses and participating municipalities, and those sponsors provide valuable resources to the municipalities through the program. However cities are not required to provide dues of $125 a year as they are voluntary.

If the Live Oak community chose to join in the site, the National Association of Cities would assign someone to the city to assist with development of pages and information updates.

City Administrator Myron Holmes said at this point he doesn't know enough about it to participate.

Visit www.buildingamerica.org to find out about your city and discover if your business or organization would be interested in joining in.

Violet McDonald may be reached by calling 1/386/362-1734, ext. 130 or on e-mail at violet.mcdonald@gaflnews.com.