Would you believe that’s a city campaign slogan?  Excelsior, Minnesota.

“We’re just against the proliferation of sameness,“ said Linda Murrell, the city’s Chamber of Commerce director.  Not surprisingly, the first ads were geared to a younger audience.  Also, downtown Excelsior activity is reported to have increased noticeably as several entrepreneurs are now interested in locating there.

Sure, you say, but Excelsior is a town of only 3000 people. Read on…

Buoyed by strong resident support,

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If you believe that what goes around comes around, you may think twice about shopping at a big box.  A CoolTown’s ‘coolness’ stems from being expressive of the people who live, work, play and employ there, not from a corporation on the other side of the country looking to mass produce its product.

A recent study tracked eight locally owned businesses and a major big box retailer in Maine.  The results:

Revenue spent within the state:
Local businesses: 53.3% (44.6% spent within the immediate

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I remember visiting Honolulu (a few islands over from Hilo) years ago and meeting up with friends at the nightlife hot spots - The Point After and Masquerades.  For a city of a million people, that was it, and we had to drive between them.

Honolulu now has a CoolTown spot (elements of a CoolTown) at Aloha Tower and there’s no question where I’d have gone every night back then: dozens of places to drink, eat, dance, listen to music, shop, or just walk around and “sightsee”.  Plus, there’s the

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In the small town of Hilo, Hawaii, the nightly hot spot (by far) is… Walmart.  While most everything is closed by 11 pm on a week night, the parking lot is full at the “Fortune 1” big box.  Walmart is the town’s effective community center.  Is this how it has to be?

As they say, if you can’t beat ‘em (and that’s tough with the largest company in the world), join ‘em.  The idea is that if Walmart is inevitable, then make it inevitable in the downtown.  A plan shown here from one of the top

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