Rural Iowa continues to lose population. How some small towns are working to ‘shrink smart’

WASHINGTON, IOWA — A retired couple peers into the storefront window, cupping their hands over their faces to get a peek at the renovations of the former Winga’s Restaurant on Washington Square.

“That happens a lot,” says Edward Santoro. He and his wife, Isabella Santoro, are investing their sweat and equity in the old Winga’s Diner.

The family-run restaurant started in 1928 as the North Side Cafe. It was a staple on the square until it closed in 2006. The storefront has sat empty ever since.

  Buy Photo

The Santoros hope to open a new restaurant in the space, Northside Diner, next spring.

The renovations have been extensive, removing layers of drywall, linoleum and false ceilings to expose original hardwood floors, brick walls, tin ceiling tiles and skylights, as well as refurbishing the former restaurant’s original wood and glass walk-in cooler.

In 2021, the Santoros applied for and received a $100,000 Main Street Iowa Challenge Grant to help with the estimated more than $300,000 cost to revitalize the building. The grants help local improvement projects such as historic building rehabilitation and upper story renovations to bring new businesses and residents to downtown districts.

Isabella serves on several committees and boards, including the steering committee of the local library board and the Hotel Motel Tax Administration Committee. The committee advises the Washington City Council on uses of the revenue derived from the tax on overnight lodging.

The committee conducted a survey of residents to garner ideas for how best to use the tax money in the town of roughly 7,300. A vast majority said they wanted more restaurants and dining options.

  Buy Photo

“I get it. I miss that not living in a big city,” said Isabella, who was born and raised in Italy and spent most of her childhood in Florence.

She moved to Washington during her high school years. A graduate of the University of Iowa, she pursued a career in international relations in Washington, D.C. and New York, but realized after a couple of years that it wasn’t her calling and returned to Iowa to join her family business.

Her mother, Washington native Lorraine Williams, opened Cafe Dodici, an American-Italian restaurant that serves rib-eye in addition to dishes like goat cheese torta and chicken roulade.

  Buy Photo

Williams opened the restaurant in 2003 after moving back to her hometown following a 30-year sales career in Italy. It was a time when she says downtown was desolate.

In the early 2000s, J.C. Penney’s, a hardware store and other downtown mainstays had departed, leaving vacant storefronts and derelict buildings behind. For years, Williams carried around the idea of restoring Washington’s downtown and felt the time was right.

She and her husband bought the empty building, stripped off the wood siding to reveal the historic brick architecture beneath and remodeled — decorating the interior with chandeliers, jade dragon eggs and bamboo tables that Williams had collected during her travels.

Despite skeptics' concerns that a posh eatery could survive in a small town, Williams and company soldiered on. She opened a coffee shop next door and renovated apartments above into Airbnb vacation rentals.

  Buy Photo

The restaurant served as a catalyst for change.

Throughout downtown, community pride shows in new brick sidewalks, period street lamps, restored storefronts, a variety of shops and restaurants humming with activity, a bandstand and lighted fountain in Central Park, and a stately $7 million public library completed in 2009.

The old J.C. Penney’s store has been renovated into The Village, a collection of individually owned boutique shops.

“It happened gradually and everyone took a little piece of the pie,” Williams said. “Money got spent — grant money, personal money, chamber money, city money, casino money (from Riverside Casino & Golf Resort). You name it. It all came together. There’s a new YMCA, a new hospital, a new high school. Everything benefits from a vibrant downtown.

“It’s the energy and heartbeat of your community,” Williams said. “But, people who live there have to believe in their community and make that leap to make that expensive renovation.”

State and regional experts say it’s a prime example of how shrinking small towns can manage and stabilize population loss, by focusing on growing community pride and identifying projects that add to residents’ quality of life.

Iowa Ideas In Depth Week Urban/Rural Divide

Are the issues facing Iowa’s urban and rural communities a divide or are there solutions that can work for both?

Join The Gazette for a free virtual Iowa Ideas In-Depth Week, beginning Monday Aug. 21 through Aug. 25 to learn from Iowa experts about the Urban/Rural Divide.

Sign up and learn more at www.iowaideas.com/in-depth/urban_rural_2023.

Most small towns will never gain population

In 1900, Iowa's rural population was just shy of 1.7 million, with almost three-fourths residing on farms or in small towns. However, with the exception of the 1990s, Iowa's rural population has declined in every census over the last 110 years.

By 2010, only 36 percent of Iowans remained in rural areas. Sixty-nine counties recorded population loss between 2010 and 2020, according to U.S. census data.

Washington’s population has fluctuated over the last three decades, but has held fairly stable at more than 7,000 residents. The town shed some residents from 1990 to 2000, but saw growth from 2000 to 2020.

  Buy Photo

Most small Iowa towns, however, will never gain population, said Kimberly Zarecor, a professor of architecture who is leading an Iowa State University research project to understand how shrinking small towns maintain quality of life.

Rural America has been shrinking for decades, and the Great Recession accelerated that contraction as rural manufacturing jobs disappeared, schools closed, farms consolidated, people moved to cities and suburbs, and rural areas saw fewer births and more deaths, Zarecor said.

Iowa has about 940 towns — 75 percent of which have populations of less than 750 people, according to the Iowa Department of Management.

All were founded in the 19th Century when there was a need to serve the small farms that surrounded the town. But over the last three decades, farms have consolidated and agricultural production has shifted to larger farms.

“Family sizes are smaller and fewer people are working in agricultural careers where they have to live on the farm, and its driving population down,” Zarecor said. “Add on top of that this trend for a preference of suburban living — affordability, quality public schools and good amenities — and it makes it hard for a community to turn population numbers around.

“A community cannot change that trajectory, but people’s perception of the town, that can change,” Zarecor.

Iowa State's rural smart shrinkage project received a three-year, $1.5 million grant from the National Science Foundation to build upon a 2017 pilot study examining whether there were towns in Iowa that have lost population but perception of quality of life has remained stable or improved.

ISU researchers have focused on learning from six rural Iowa towns (Elma, Sac City, Bancroft, Corning, Mt. Ayr and Everly) where active, dedicated residents — called “local champions” — are collaborating to maintain and boost quality of life.

The team found that, among other factors, social infrastructure plays a major role in whether residents report greater quality of life.

Rather than looking outward, trying to lure more families and employers to sparsely populated rural areas, communities have a greater shot at success by building a stronger identity and sense of belonging in a community, Zarecor said.

Economic development projects often require significant financial investment and may or may not pan out long-term, whereas quality-of-life initiatives — such as trails, community events, fitness options and child care — are typically low-cost and in local control, Zarecor said.

“It helps those looking to move back to the community if they come back and see people positive about the community. That’s the best advertisement of the town,” she said.

Getting there, however, means first accepting that shrinking towns are not seen as problematic or failing, but rather as a reality to be embraced and understood.

”None of these towns have done anything wrong. … But we’ve been conditioned to think that growth is a positive and population loss is a sign of something going wrong,“ Zarecor said. ”We’re trying to say the population loss is … outside the control of any one community and something we have to accept.”

Fundraising, volunteerism are part of ‘shrink smart’ towns

David Peters is a professor of sociology and rural sociologist with ISU Extension and coordinator of the Iowa Small Towns Project.

  Buy Photo

The rural Midwest has experienced dramatic changes in health and social well-being over the past decade. Peters said there is an immediate need to understand the impacts of COVID-19 in rural communities, especially in hard-hit meatpacking towns dominated by people of color. There also is a need to better understand how rural quality of life is maintained in the face of population loss, and how small towns can promote social integration between longtime residents and new people of color, Peters said.

Immigration and refugees have helped sustain rural areas, while domestic migration has drawn people away.

In 2022, Iowa lost nearly 7,300 people to domestic migration, but gained nearly 7,300 international migrants, according to U.S. census data.

Peters conducts the Iowa Small Town Poll, which tracks quality of life and social conditions in rural Iowa. Data has been collected every 10 years since 1994 to provide insights into changes occurring in small towns and to inform policy decisions at the local, state, and national levels.

Among the “shrink smart” communities studied by ISU researchers that have slower population loss and high quality of life, all tend to have high volunteering rates, more people engaged in leadership positions, are welcoming to new ideas and new people, and use existing resources to identify needs, Peters said.

Other common characteristics of “shrink smart” communities in Iowa include:

“They realize no one is coming to save their town,” he said. “If their town was going to survive and have a future it was going to be up to them. Failing towns place a lot of blame on political leaders in D.C. or Des Moines, or an employer leaving. They’re very passive … and feel any solution to save the town is going to have to come the outside — an employer coming in or the government coming in.”

A focus on ‘the little things’

Peters gave the example to Grand Mound, a town of a little more than 600 people in Clinton County near the eastern edge of the state.

Grand Mound has experienced setbacks. The local school closed along with the local grocery store, restaurants and bars. Yet, the town has managed to maintain a relatively high quality of life, Peters said.

Grand Mound has seen slower population loss than other small towns in the state, but has higher social capital. Residents surveyed as part of the Iowa Small Town Poll said they felt much more involved in decisions, and feel the town is supportive and trusting of new projects and ideas. Ground Mount, though, had slower quality-of-life gains on jobs, housing and K-12 schools.

“In short, (Grand Mound) is a moderately shrinking place with a high and growing quality of life,” Peters said.

Mayor Kurt Crosthwaite said the town has retained its vibrancy thanks to dedicated volunteers.

Led by the Community Club, volunteers support everything, from the local fire department to holiday and children’s events to upgrading the town’s community center.

“There’s not much to keep people in town for jobs,” Crosthwaite said. “People refer to us as a bedroom community. We have one bar in town that serves food. We have a convenience store in town to get gas and some grocery items. We have an insurance company in town that recently built a new building. We have a local bank. There’s not much.”

Town officials have focused on “the little things,” Crosthwaite said. A new walking path, lighting and improvements at the ballpark. A mural painted on the side of an old meat market. And a “major face-lift” to the community center.

Next on the docket is raising money for a splash pad at the park.

  Buy Photo

Sarah Beuthien moved to Ground Mound from Davenport 20 years ago. What’s kept her there is the safety and peace of living in a small town, strong social ties and bonds to others in the community, and the opportunity to make a difference in the community.

Beuthien serves on Grand Mound’s Hometown Pride Committee and is president of the Grand Mound Community Center board.

“At one point in time I’ve done just about everything, except for city council,” she said.

She started a holiday tree-lighting festival now going into its fifth year. She also helped raise more than $30,000 to remodel the community center.

“It brought more people from other towns to rent out the center, which brings more people in our town looking around and seeing things,” Beuthien said. “It’s a steppingstone to deciding to live here or going to the fireman’s breakfast. It all trickles down.”

Removing the stigma of population loss

Zarecor, the ISU professor leading the rural “shrink smart” project, said what’s missing in Iowa and other Midwestern states is a strategy at the county and regional level to better use public and private resources to strengthen some of the small communities more likely to have long-term success at improving quality of life.

“Right now, we have a piecemeal strategy and communities competing against one another because there’s not enough money to go around,” Zarecor said. “At the state level it’s more about competing (for grants), but we have not seen evidence of a strategy.”

Getting there and getting people more positive about their lives in Iowa, though, is going to require removing the “stigma of population loss out of the conversation,” Zarecor said.

Comments: (319) 398-8499; tom.barton@thegazette.com