Seven employers had tables at the Fort Scott Job Fair at the performing arts building of FSCC today.  Here is a little about each company.

Carlisle

They didn’t want to say anything about their company without having it approved by their corporate office, but it is reasonable to assume they have at least one position open.

Klein

Klein makes water and fuel tanks that are then mounted on the back of large trucks. They are looking for welders, mechanics, drafts persons, and other positions. Klein is based in Fort Scott and the company has been around since the 1960s. They are looking for employees who can help them grow.

Epoch

Epoch is located in the old Western/Cigna building near Mercy Hospital. Epoch is part of Blue Cross Blue Shield of Kansas City. They process claims for Blue Cross and other companies. They have claims and data entry positions coming available and plan to hire 20 to 50 people in the next 3 or 4 months. They also plan to have some customer service positions open the second half of 2012.

Since examining claims is something that takes training, they are partnering with FSCC to create an online course to train claims examiners.

AZZ Atkinson

Atkinson is located in the industrial park in Pittsburg. They make custom enclosures for electrical and waste water treatment facilities. They have a number of floor positions open (electricians, welders, painters, etc.) as well as some office positions. They are looking to hire a total of 25 to 30 people. They are currently running a day shift of 7 to 3:30 Monday-Friday and are getting ready to start a night shift from 8:30p to 7am Sunday – Thursday.

Peerless

Peerless makes architectural windows and doors and is based in Fort Scott. They are looking for an IT Programmer and a Production Supervisor. Peerless touts their competitive pay, good benefits and stable business history as benefits to potential employees.

H & H Publishing

H & H publishes the Deadline and other advertising. They have current openings for sales associates and are looking to expand business in the near future. With their expansion they will need investigative reporters, sports writers and other writers.

Hospice Care of Kansas

Hospice Care of Kansas provides hospice services to people with terminal illness and support for their families. This includes medical help, but also involves bereavement support and even a summer camp for kids who have lost a loved one. They are currently looking for LPNs and RNs. They have two full time positions available, but there are many opportunities for people who want part time work.

They are also looking for volunteers who can sit with patients or help answer phones in the office.

Kansas Works

While not an employer, Kansas Works had a table at the job fair to let potential employees and employers know about their services. For employees they offer many self service tools via their website. These tools include job search and online resume listing services. There is also a Local Workforce Center in Pittsburg where job seekers can go to get help with their resume and job hunting skills.

Kansas Works also has a number of grants available that allow them to offer in greater assistant for people in certain situations. This can include training and education. In some cases they can even offer on the job training where employers are reimbursed for a portion of the wages they pay a new employee as they learn the skills of a new position.

Kansas Works also offers programs for at risk kids and youth to help them acquire work experience and  gain some of the soft skills necessary to pursue a job in the market.

For employers, they offer a number of services that can help provide grants and tax savings for organizations that are looking to hire. Since they work with a large number of prospective employees they can provide many services for free such as screening, recruitment, and advertising available positions.

The weekly Chamber Coffee was held at the VFW Post 1165 this morning. VFW Chairman Clint Walker told a little about what the VFW is doing in the community and thanked the businesses for their support.  The VFW sponsors a Voice of Democracy scholarship contest where high school students make an audio essay. Theresa Schafer won for the state of Kansas. (You can listen to her audio essay here.)  The VFW also sponsors a contest for middle school age children called Patriot Pen.

The flags that line the road to the National Cemetery are done by the VFW. Most of them are given in honor of someone. You can buy a flag in honor of a loved one for $35 through the VFW.  Mr. Walker said he would be setting up the flags at 7am tomorrow morning if anyone would like to come out and help.

Mr. Walker told the story of when he was working as a recruiter at the beginning of the first Gulf War. He said a 70 year old woman came in to show him a bag of medals and a newspaper clipping from her son who had died in World War II. The woman said that if she had it all to do over, she would give her son for America again.

A few other announcements that were made at the meeting:

• There two veteran’s programs tomorrow at 11am and 2pm at the National Cemetery.
• Jamie Armstrong announced that her Edward D. Jones office is going to be opening next to Subway on Thursday.
• Everything Pets will be opening on Saturday.
• The downtown Christmas open house (pdf) is tonight and many businesses will be staying open until 8.
• Life + Style will have a number of food samples available downtown tonight.
• The Kiwanis chili feed is tonight.
• Mercy has a chili cookoff on the 15th.
• The Citizen’s Bank Bowl will be played in Pittsburg on December 4th.
• The Chamber Community Guide is looking for content about local businesses.

 

 

There will be a job fair held at the FSCC Danny & Willa Ellis Fine Arts Center on Thursday, November 10th from 10am to 2pm. If you are looking for a job, put it on your calendar. If you know of anyone looking for a job, please let them know about it.

The flyer lists six companies that will be at the fair:

• Atkinson Industries from Pittsburg
• Carlisle Transportation Products
• The Epoch Group
• H&H Publishing
• Klein Products
• Peerless Products

There are over 20 positions listed. You can download the flyer from here: Job Fair Flyer – Fall 2011

Members of Fort Scott Disc Gunners took advantage of the warmer weather late Friday afternoon to play some disc golf in Gunn Park.The Gunn Park disc golf course was originally installed with 9 “holes” in 1999 and in more recent years has been upgraded to 18 holes. Most have a regular and alternate location and they are regularly shifted between these positions to add variety. The course length varies between 4908 ft. and 6375 ft. depending on the configuration.

 

Fort Scott has a reasonable number of choices for internet access.  Here is a list of what is available depending on exactly where you live.

• AT&T – DSL services provided over phone lines. Your lines can be further than 14,000 feet from the central office and some of the older lines won’t work.
• Suddenlink – Provided over cable connections. If you can get cable, you can probably gett this.
• RTS – Local wireless provider.
• Valnet – A wireless provider from Independence.
• Alpha Wireless – A new wireless provider in town. It isn’t clear if they are up and running yet or not.

That looks like quite a few options, but they all have one thing in common. They all get their bandwidth to Fort Scott from AT&T. So while there can be a certain amount of competition in how to connect your home, there is no competition in the underlying resource–access to the Internet.

Does this lack of competition drive the price up in Fort Scott? For comparison, I have a server in downtown Kansas City. For $50 per month I can get a 100 Mbps connection to the Internet. This would be enough bandwidth to let a local ISP supply reasonable service to a large number of customers. Now we’d expect that it would cost more to get a connection like that in Fort Scott than in Kansas City, but how much more? If it would cost 20 times more that would be $1,000 per month. Obviously that is more than what you’d want to put in your house, but it wouldn’t be out of reach for a business–particularly an ISP.

When I talked to AT&T about getting a connection like that, the initial price started out at around $39,266 per month. With a long contract and a special they were running, the price would come down to $31,333. After talking with a few different people, it sounded like there might be a way to cut that in half and get down to the $15,000 range. Still that is 300 times what bandwidth costs in downtown Kansas City. Could you imagine if your electric or telephone bill cost 300 times more than it costs in a larger city? Instead of a $90 per month electric bill, it would cost you $27,000 pre month. Instead of a $32 per month phone bill, it would cost $9,600.

If you were starting a business that required a reliable high speed connection to the Internet, would you go to the town where it costs $50 per month or the town where it costs $15,000? The future of small towns like Fort Scott is going to be very closely tied to their ability to tap into reliable inexpensive bandwidth. As long as everything comes through a single provider, there is no competition to drive the price down. Right now, no matter how many new ISPs start up in town, they are are all going to be reselling bandwidth from the same expensive source.

If Fort Scott wants to be competitive in the future, we are going to need to find ways to get competitively priced bandwidth into the city.

When Paul Feeney and his wife got to town last week to begin their project of turning the old middle school into a family entertainment location they found that the building wasn’t in the same condition they had left it. Vandals had broken in and gone through smashing most of the glass and spraying graffiti all over the walls. The floors were covered with broken glass and broken light bulbs.

There were quite a few things stolen as well including a nice weight machine and various equipment and tools. Many of the kitchen appliances were damaged and broken.  The vandals located some of the paint that had been stored by the previous owners and poured it out on the floor. A toilet had been pulled out of one of the rooms and thrown from the balcony in the auditorium.

Security cameras captured video of many of the miscreants and the police department is working on locating them.

All in all, it was a less than idea welcome to Fort Scott. Mr. Feeney said he briefly wondered if buying the building had been a big mistake, but after a few days of cleaning up the damage he is excited about the plans for the electric go-carts and other entertainment for the citizens of Fort Scott.

He still anticipates that the initial attractions should be opening in 2 or 3 years. The go carts will probably be put on the ground floor and the gym is the likely location for a climbing wall and possibly an indoor skateboard half-pipe.

He and his wife plan to live in the building and the tower in the center will be turned into an apartment with roof access and a great view of the city. Mr. Feeney said once he gets the glass cleaned up, his first priority is making sure the building is ready for winter and fixing any leaks in the roof that might lead to bigger problems later on. He said over all, the structure of the building seems pretty sound, but the roof has some leaks that need addressed–particularly in the center tower.

Another thing he is working on is getting a good inventory of what is actually in the building. He has found some unexpected surprises. There are a great number of what appears to be ceramic molds in what was once the cafeteria. It isn’t clear if those were put there by a previous owner or if they were part of the school. In a dark corner of the basement there are a number of canisters that appear to be rations and supplies from the cold war era.

The go carts that are planned for the building run on electric rechargeable batteries. Mr. Feeney expects the carts alone will cost somewhere around $200,000. He said his goal for the carts is to bring in enough to cover their operational costs and he is expecting to have a very hefty electric bill once things get going. He is less concerned about them bringing in enough to make money or even recover his initial investment.

Beyond the vandalism, there building has been left sitting for quite some time and is going to take some significant work. It appears that some previous owner may have removed much of the wiring to sell for scrap metal and the sump pumps in the boiler room haven’t been working so there is several feet of water in that area. There are many areas where the paint is peeling from the walls and plaster is falling off.

Despite all the work that is needed, Mr. Feeney’s enthusiasm is contagious and it is hard not to fall in love with the old building. Their goal of turning the school into an entertainment venue is going to require a lot of work, but it will be a great asset to the Fort Scott area and hopefully can serve as a model of what other communities can do with their large old buildings.

In the run up for the last city commissioner election, I was very interested in hearing from the candidates at a forum where they were asked about their plan for downtown. I was very disappointed that most of the ideas consisted of “get businesses” and “get grants.”  If anyone had concrete ideas, they weren’t shared at the meeting.

Even a candidate whose family had previously run a downtown businesses didn’t have anything to share about what would have kept them from moving. I’m not trying to criticize anyone, but just point out that there doesn’t seem to be a lot of ideas (at least that I’m aware of) designed to benefit the downtown area and get more foot traffic to those shops.

So to get the conversation started, here are five ideas of mine.  I’m not saying that they are all great ideas, but even starting with a bad idea can help get people thinking and eventually produce some winners.

Be sure to leave your comments at the bottom. Which of these ideas sound worthwhile? Which sound stupid? What other ideas can you think of?

1. Put In a Play Scape

At Wall and Main there is a large grassy area where a building burned down. This space is owned by the city and contains a concrete pad where the Christmas tree is attached around the holidays.

My family eats down town nearly every week with some friends. After dinner we will usually head over to this grassy area so the kids can run around, maybe kick a soccer ball a bit and the adults can talk.

This area could be turned into a very nice small park to help draw people into downtown. A school grade plastic and metal play scape that can accomodate about 22 children would cost around $11,000 for the hardware. A larger unit that can accomodate 50 children would probably be in the $30,000 range. Wooden systems may be considerably less expensive and it might even be possible to get used equipment from schools that close down, etc.

One of the nice things about this idea, is that if there is ever a desire to put a building back there, it wouldn’t be ridiculous to think about moving a play scape to one of the other city parks.

2. Giveaways & Contests

My dad grew up in Arcadia back when it was a thriving little town. To help get people downtown, they would choose one night when all the stores would stay open late and they would do drawings to give away cash and prizes sponsored by the downtown merchants. This produced quite a draw and the only way to fit everyone in was to double park up and down the street.

Could something similar work in downtown Fort Scott?  Maybe or maybe not, but it might be worth considering.

3. Downtown Movie Night

Would people come downtown to watch a city sponsored movie on the side of one of the buildings? The downtown concerts are great, but perhaps showing Toy Story 3, would pull in a slightly different demographic. It might mainly help the two restaurants downtown because most of the other shops are usually closed in the evening. I’m not sure what the cost would be to show a movie like that, but I imagine it wouldn’t be outrageous.

4. Use Empty Shop Windows

One thing that is plentiful downtown are shop windows and unfortunately many of them are empty. I’ve seen some efforts to put up displays in some of these windows, but none of them were things that you’d make a specific trip to go see.  Would people come downtown to view local art work? What if high-school & middle school art projects were displayed downtown–perhaps a contest where people could vote for the winner from their cell phones?

5. Free Wireless Internet

Pretty much any downtown business is going to need to pay for Internet. This will probably cost $50 to $150 per month depending on what options are available at a particular location. Offering free wireless can help free up those dollars for businesses that are willing to invest in our downtown and if done correctly, the cost should be fairly inexpensive.

A mesh based solution like Meraki would make it easy to cover the downtown area and add on access points to get to the back of buildings or other places where reception didn’t have good signal from the main antennas. The actual hardware to get started would probably cost somewhere in the $2,500 to $4,000 range and businesses who wanted better coverage could buy an extender for around $200. Monthly costs would probably be in the $50 to $150 range–or virtually nothing if it could be run over the city’s existing connection.

In addition to helping the businesses, it would benefit visitors who need to get to the internet from their phone or laptop. Obviously offering free wifi isn’t going to produce a flood of 100s of visitors each day, but it is a little thing that can make for a more pleasant visit for the people who want or need access.

So there are five ideas. If you’ve read all of them, I bet you have some opinions about what might work and what wouldn’t and chances are you have some other ideas that are much better than what I’ve come up with. Please take a few minutes to share your ideas and thoughts in the comments where everyone can benefit from your perspective.

Julie Saker and Bill Farr are partnering together on buying the old IGA to turn it into a bowling alley–something that Fort Scott has been missing for quite a few years now. They hope to have it open by May or June. The plan is for the new facility to include 12 lanes of bowling.  It will also have a grill and arcade area.

Julie wasn’t sure if smoking would be allowed or not under Kansas state law, but there are no plans to make it a private club. They do plan to get a liquor license so beer can be served.

The project is going to be partially financed by investors. Julie said that Macy Cullison is going to help the partners look into getting some grants and they will probably finance any remaining needs with a loan.  Julie also said they are open to talking with other people who might be interested in investing in the project.

They haven’t come up with a good idea for the name yet and are looking for suggestions. If you have a good name for a bowling alley in Fort Scott, please leave it in the comments below and we’ll make sure Julie gets to see them.