Technology helps Gothenburg thrive

LINCOLN — If Norman Rockwell had carried an iPod and posted on Twitter, he probably would have liked living in the Nebraska town of Gothenburg.

That's how residents describe their community of 3,693 along Interstate 80 between Lexington and North Platte.

Anne Anderson, executive director of Gothenburg's Community Development office, said the town's tree-lined streets and historic homes look like something the late illustrator would have painted for a Saturday Evening Post cover.

Yet the town's embrace of computer technology, as well as its 1980s adoption of a sales tax to help pay for economic development, has helped Gothenburg attract new businesses and young families.

At an economic development banquet Friday in Kearney, the town was honored as the top community in the state, receiving the Otto Hoiberg award for participating in the Nebraska Community Improvement Program.

Gothenburg is among the minority of towns in Nebraska that have consistently grown throughout their history, said U.S. Census researcher David Drozd of the University of Nebraska at Omaha.

Except for a slight decline during the farm crisis years of the 1980s, Gothenburg has posted population growth every decade at least since 1890.

“There's not all that many communities in Nebraska that are growing, so to be on the positive side is great,” Drozd said.

The town recently persuaded Monsanto to base its new learning center, a high-tech facility highlighting its research, in Gothenburg.

Students at the high school are preparing podcasts about local businesses to post on the Internet to help attract more people to their hometown.

Major industries include Baldwin Filters Inc., which employs 140; Parker Tech Seals Divison, employing 70; and Frito Lay Inc., which has 20 employees but buys corn from about 150 farmers in an eight-county region.

Anderson also touts the opening of an Orscheln farm supply store and Pamida store within the past two years.

Visitors come to play golf at the nationally ranked Wild Horse Golf Club and to see a Pony Express Station that attracts about 25,000 people a year.

That doesn't mean the town is immune from recent economic woes.

About 50 residents work at the Tenneco shock absorber plant in Cozad, which is slated to shut down next year. Community leaders are working to find new jobs for those people, Anderson said.

Chandler Mazour, his wife, Deanna, and their four children moved to Gothenburg from St. Louis in August 2008. He is the manager of the Monsanto Learning Center.

Although he and his wife are both natives of small-town Nebraska, they weren't so sure they were ready to leave the big city.

But they were sold after a two-day visit in which they attended church, were matched up with couples their own age for a cookout and visited the school.

“They're very welcoming to strangers,” Mazour said. “I'm not so sure you find that in a lot of places. You can recruit folks in, but if the community as a whole doesn't embrace the strangers, then it's not going to work.”

School Superintendent Mike Teahon, who moved to Gothenburg nine years ago, just after the community built a $12 million school, said he's been impressed by the community's “can-do” attitude.

A group of volunteers, for example, operate the Sun Theater, where first-run movies are shown on weekends.

“I've never been around people with the attitude that Gothenburg has,” he said. “It's not ‘Can we do it?' It's ‘How do we get this done?'”

Contact the writer:

402-473-9581, leslie.reed@owh.com

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