Our area needs more collaboration within the community and the region. Albert Lea has a lot of potential. We have wonderful, hardworking residents, beautiful lakes that are getting cleaned up and will truly be the focal point of our city, and our businesses are very diverse. There is a substantial amount of momentum from the historic downtown projects, lake dredging, community events like Wind Down Wednesday and much more. I don’t care about what people say about Albert Lea not growing 20 years ago. We’re growing now, and that’s what matters!

If our community wants to get even better, we need to collaborate more. Yes, there absolutely is collaboration going on, but it needs to become the norm across our community overall. It seems most entities in town struggle to communicate effectively, including the boards I’m on, and we don’t often share resources.

The chamber and ALEDA are combining resources and going under one roof, and the CVB should be doing the same. There are several businesses that never seem to get outside their four walls and join the rest of the community. There are some great things going on in Mankato that Albert Lea and our surrounding communities should be joining.

After the last big recession, Mankato did well compared to other communities its size, and when they came together to figure out why, they determined that agriculture propped up their economy. Businesses that weren’t normally identified as ag-based, such as food manufacturing and transportation companies, were found to be doing well because of their ties with ag. GreenSeam was started to bring representation and resources to the region’s ag community. Not just in Mankato, but southern Minnesota. Greater Mankato Growth was ranked the sixth-largest chamber in the state, and the way they share resources instead of having separate entities is a model that would work well for us. Their Small Business Development Center, it’s collaboration with Minnesota State University and the resulting Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship is a huge resource for entrepreneurs in Albert Lea that is just starting to be utilized. None of these collaborations are threats to Albert Lea’s identity, but rather resources and collaborations that our community can benefit from immensely!

As both my wife and I start businesses, the big difference I see between our communities is that in Albert Lea, many people don’t ask a lot of questions about a new business or seek out ways to promote them. In Mankato, the norm seems to be people asking, “how can I help you?” That is a culture shift that I’d love to see happen in our community.

I believe we’re on the verge of another substantial recession. If Albert Lea is to thrive instead of watch jobs die off and residents suffer, we need to look to strengthen our ties with others in the region, bring resources to our existing and newly-formed companies to protect jobs, bring value-added opportunities to our ag-community and collaborate more.

Brad Kramer

Albert Lea