T-R PHOTO BY TREVOR BABCOCK
The new Marshalltown Area Chamber of Commerce President John Hall began work in Marshalltown on Monday, and is already underway meeting with community members.
On the ground and around town, the new president and CEO of the Marshalltown Area Chamber of Commerce is here.
John Hall arrived in Marshalltown on Monday from his post as Vice President of the Ames Chamber of Commerce and Economic Development Commission. His first two weeks on the job are packed with meetings with community leaders, which he said is exactly what he wants.
“I get so much energy from those interactions,” Hall said.
He described the Marshalltown Area Chamber of Commerce as the sales team for the community, selling Marshalltown to those outside the community, while also being the glue between the city’s different organizations and businesses to make development happen.
“It’s our job to know everybody and to be able to tie folks together,” Hall said. “Our goal is to hopefully align leadership so that we’re all pulling in the same direction.”
Creating meaningful employment opportunities is a major goal for Hall and said he puts emphasis on the word meaningful, which to him means an employee can feel satisfied in the work they do, can support their families and have advancement within the community.
“Any chance I can get to provide folks the opportunities to support their families such that they are then providing that next generation more opportunity is where I get my joy, my energy and my passion from,” Hall said.
When bringing in new opportunities, he wants to make sure there is a balance of the type of job offerings available while making sure high school and college graduates sense those so they may choose to live here.
Marshalltown’s employers, a mix of blue collar and white collar, is one of the city’s strengths for economic development, Hall said. He sees the community’s industries as providing meaningful employment opportunities.
“Not only is there a robust amount of industry, but there’s an engaged industry in the community and that makes a big, big difference,” he said.
The Marshalltown Area Chamber of Commerce has solidified a goal to grow the city’s population to 50,000 by 2030 as well as Marshall County’s population to 70,000.
“Where we’re at is probably not where everyone wants to be in terms of population growth, but where we’re going is going to drive that direction,” Hall said.
He said a big part of reaching the goal will be getting Marshalltown up to speed on housing, which has been a challenge to get workers, particularly in white collar positions, to say yes to living in Marshalltown as there is a shortage of new houses. Hall said the Chamber and the city have done excellent work in providing the home buying incentive of $10,000, but he will work with employers to see what they are doing to encourage their employees to live in Marshalltown.
“This isn’t going to be a wide scale recruitment effort. We’re not going to bring in people by the bus load and drop them off and have them live here,” Hall said. “This is going to be a conversation that happens one to two people at a time, until you start to get some momentum, and some to buy in and folks start to say yes.”
Hall said the other piece is upskilling residents in blue collar positions or lower paying jobs. He said upskilling those workers may take collaboration with Marshalltown Community College to get more workers in higher paying jobs after completing a two-year program.
“Not only does that upskill them, give them better quality life, better balance in their community, but it gives them resources to spend locally at our restaurants and entertainment and inject capital back into their homes and into projects that they want to do instead of have to do,” Hall said. “That’s where we want people to get to, to be a ‘want to’ economy instead of a ‘have to’ economy.”
Growing Marshalltown’s infrastructure of amenities, fun activities to do on nights and weekends, Hall sees as a big factor in getting people to say yes to living in Marshalltown.
Marshalltown’s downtown area is still looking beat up in wake of natural disasters and a great deal of rebuilding needs to take place to get the needle moving on tourism, he said. However, he feels the leadership within the city is very strong, and work has already been underway in improving the downtown.
Growing the population outside of Marshalltown Hall said will take knowing what each of the smaller town’s niche is and what their individual needs are, as growth in outside communities also benefit Marshalltown.
“Somebody living in State Center is probably going to do most of their shopping in Marshalltown or a job created in State Center may result in that person living in Marshalltown,” he said. “We can’t look just within the immediate confines of our community. We have to think broadly about how we can move the needle, regionally, in order to achieve that goal.”
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Contact Trevor Babcock at 641-753-6611 or tbabcock@timesrepublican.com.
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