particular have kept him close to home as an anchor tenant in diane s iron tech incubator. i was born at beloit hospital. my dad went to beloit memorial high school. my grandpa worked in this building, actually, for a company called beloit corporation for 42 years. being part of the rebirth of this town s economy is a point of pride. not everybody wants to move to california or boston or new york. i mean, they re great communities. they re great cities. but it s also nice here in the midwest. they didn t just fix it up. they elevated it to chicago high-end office smpace and the companies started coming in. we re actually going to rent 20,000 square feet from them next year. just signed the lease. steve eldred is the fourth generation owner of beloit national bank. he says the enthusiasm has energized business owners like himself to expedite and refine earlier renovation plans begun
well, today the town of beloit is scraping off the rust and reconfiguring those hulking old buildings into centers for new tech industry. if redo that, that might be the best path, don t you think? they re repurposing the buildings and the town to support tech sector jobs that now drive today s economy. you have to remake yourself, and that s what we re doing here in beloit. this is never going to be a heavy manufacturing city again. diane hendricks is one of the town leaders making this possible. we can t fix downtown without jobs. as a key actor in the local business community, she wants her energy and her money to do more than rehab a few old buildings. she wants to rehab the town s whole economy. not just build the buildings and make it look pretty, but put lives in there. she and her late husband ken made billions in the construction supply industry. they then applied their skills
has made what we re doing in beloit so successful. and we re seeing an increasing business from those people that are coming to work here along with the fact that people are now traveling here. so there s business travelers that come to town. jackie s sandwich shop/bookstore/pickle factory may look a little rough around the edges. but she says not only does her business bushel and pecks benefit from the growing new tech economy, but her rehabbed woolworth s location is also what draws those tech businesses into town. the relationship actually goes both ways. we benefit the recruitment of those employees that are going to come to work in this community. they need innovation in what they re seeing in their personal lives too. i think there s definitely a ripple effect. they identified their problems, understood what they were, and worked together. marjory driscoll and her
and millions of their own dollars into buying up many of those neglected buildings. today she and the town are bringing in tech industry tenants to replace the long-gone manufacturers. the town is transitioning. it s going through a digital transformation. you know, we re literally in the remnants of a factory. and now we have people programming software code. troy is part of that transition. as a tech start-up investor, he says the developing beloit economy is itself a kind of start-up. we re really creating, i think, a vibrant start-up hub that s going to only increase in prominence. we ve got new restaurants. we have new businesses. there s 2,000-something employees in this building now. just five, six years ago, there was a couple hundred. richard is the founder of acculynx.com. while he could have easily located the business in silicon valley, his strong family ties to beloit and this building in
one small town says shop local starts with work local. and to keep their main street vibrant, this town has made an all-out bid to transform its economy from manufacturing to tech. thanks in part to the efforts of some far-sighted planners and one of the wealthiest women in the state. we went to beloit, wisconsin, to find out how that s working. ten years ago, beloit, wisconsin, was in trouble. ten years ago we d go to lunch, and there would be nobody at the restaurants. we would come and work on sundays and sit outside and watch no one drive down the streets. growing up, if you wanted to do something, you left beloit. to understand why, just look around the town. you see powerful smokestacks, brick factory buildings, and imposing store fronts. structures that once symbolized the pride of downtown america. now for most of us, these represent nothing more than long-neglected icons of rust-belt obsolescence.