Going from economic rut to groove in Liberal, Kansas (2024)

Is Liberal stuck in a rut? A year and a half ago, José Lara thought so.

The U.S. Census showed Liberal and Seward County losing population. There were only about 10 new houses being built each year in town. He wasn’t seeing new businesses open.

“Our actual growth at that point was very, very limited. I definitely believe Liberal was in a rut,” he says. “We were not growing at a point that I would be comfortable with.”

Lara, 32, an insurance agent who is married with three young kids, decided to get involved in his community. He ran for a seat on the Liberal City Commission, won and is now the first bilingual Latino mayor (He was re-elected earlier this fall). Lara thinks he represents Liberal’s median age and racial makeup well – Liberal’s median age is 29 and, according to the census, is 65% Latino (although locals say the percentage is more in the range of 70% to 75% Latino). He was born in Liberal, raised in Guymon, Oklahoma, and came back to town eight years ago.

“It’s an interesting mix, what I bring to the table. There was a time when there were no Spanish speaking commissioners,” he says. “Most people can (now) come to our City Commission meetings with a grievance, and we would be able to understand them and translate for them in real time.”

Language gaps such as the one Lara describes are an example of hidden barriers that can hold communities back. It’s hard for many to see them until there’s a crisis or an inadvertent solution comes along – in this case, Spanish-speaking commissioners coming on board – that quickly makes clear how things have advanced.

But can community members also make conscious choices together that improve their economies? That’s what Lara and a group of about a dozen Liberal residents have been trying to learn through an effort over the past six months to improve what’s been termed the “entrepreneurial ecosystem.”

Those who don’t come from the world of entrepreneurship might not have heard of an “entrepreneurial ecosystem.” But the concept isn’t all that different from the natural ecosystems explained in science classrooms, and how plants, animals and other organisms work in concert with the weather and landscape to sustain life.

Strong entrepreneurial ecosystems sustain the ability of local risk takers to develop, launch and grow business ideas and businesses to better meet a community’s needs. It obviously takes entrepreneurs, sometimes many of them. But according to the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, a Kansas City, Missouri-based nonprofit devoted to fostering economic growth through entrepreneurship, other aspects are also required, ones that might be less visible or obvious.

They include access to talent within the community; people and institutions with knowledge and resources to help; on-ramps that allow people to participate; intersections where people, ideas and resources can collide; a powerful story that makes progress possible; and a culture where collaboration, cooperation and trust thrive.

Truly inclusive entrepreneurial ecosystems – places where new business ideas flourish, and support is widely available regardless of background – are rare. And even in places such as Silicon Valley, it can take decades to develop a thriving one. Where do communities start? And how do they know what to prioritize?

Through a three-month pilot program called Heartland Together, funded by the Kauffman Foundation and designed by the Kansas Leadership Center, Liberal’s trailblazing dozen have been working to strengthen their leadership skills in order to get more people engaged in shaping their entrepreneurial ecosystem for the better. The hope is the training and activities associated with the program will help members of the community more effectively connect their networks and resources.

Made possible by a $450,000 multiyear grant from Kauffman to the KLC, the Heartland Together pilot program also plans to provide leadership training to entrepreneurship support groups in Marshalltown, Iowa; Hutchinson, Kansas; and the Kansas City area. Participants will also work to develop a slate of projects aimed at trying to strengthen each community’s hand at entrepreneurial vitality. (The Journal is published by the KLC, but this story was reported independently.)

“Our hope is that if communities focus more on local entrepreneurs, then that is a more sustainable way for a community and individuals in that community to have economic prosperity,” says Lucy Petroucheva, who has managed the program for the Kansas Leadership Center.

In Liberal, that means residents have been working to improve the experience of entrepreneurs who are opening or expanding a business in the county, boost Liberal’s community pride, celebrate its diverse culture and get more people to open businesses in town.

Already headed in a good direction

Even if every project achieves every objective, the effort is likely to represent just an early step in Liberal’s path toward a more inclusive entrepreneurial ecosystem and growing economy.

To help with the underpinning needed to accomplish the overall goals, Heartland Together helps a community identify and focus on common challenges. Back in April, May and June, residents gathered to better understand the persistent issues in the network of support around entrepreneurship. Included in those meetings were local business owners, the development corporation, the chamber of commerce, a local radio station, National Beef Packing Co. and others.

The good news is that the town was already headed in the direction of inclusion prior to Heartland Together. Lara says two new bilingual commissioners over the past year and a half, along with other changes, means Liberal is evolving and working its way out of that rut.

“There was a lot of the ‘we’ve always done it this way’ mentality that we quickly went through and addressed,” Lara says of the commission’s new attitude. “And ‘we’ve always done it this way’ quickly became the first phrase we got rid of. If you don’t know why you’re doing it that way, either find out why you’re continuing to do it that way, or find a new way that’s better. And so far, it’s been working.”

Yet pinpointing what is an entrepreneurial ecosystem problem can be complex. Is it simply about the support systems business owners receive as they move from prospective entrepreneurs to founders? Or do broader community challenges that affect entrepreneurial activity, such as a lack of housing, need to be tackled, too?

Because circ*mstances vary from community to community, experts can be wary of offering a generic prescription.

Lea Ann Seiler, the entrepreneurship manager for the southwest Kansas region for NetWork Kansas, which is dedicated to developing entrepreneurial ecosystems, says she’s not in the business of diagnosing problems in communities. She leaves that up to the locals and says she meets communities where they are and focuses on what residents say their community needs.

That might include accessing loans with low interest rates at local banks with first-time business owners who are minorities or working with small-business development centers.

For instance, in September, Seiler was at the New Mexico State Fair, promoting Kansas and trying to fill a shortage of employees in the state.

“We work together to promote communities,” Seiler says.

‘Rich in culture’

The years-long slow cycle of homebuilding has been a sign of stagnation in the community, but it’s now becoming a marker for a culture that’s finding ways to navigate challenges.

Lara says he uses the word “rut” because, at best, Liberal was building six to 10 housing units a year for about five years, and he says the lack of housing put a limit on the city’s growth.

With help from its 1-cent sales tax and a state incentives program, Liberal plans to build roughly 250 new houses over the next three years, with more housing to come after that.

“That promise of workforce growth will be another tool in our belt to entice larger companies to consider Liberal in the future and now,” Lara says.

The community’s story is also changing, although the contours can be complicated and there is a sense that it is a work in progress.

Race and ethnicity serve as dividing lines, but identities here are unusually intricate, compared with the nation as a whole. About 26% of Liberal residents identify as being white but not Hispanic or Latino, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. 65% of the community identifies as Hispanic or Latino.

Further, the community is about 3% African American and Asian, while nearly 18% identify with two or more races.

Yet at the same time, slightly more than 50% of the community identifies as white, including more than a third of Latinos. In shaping its story, Liberal is in some ways leading Kansas, a state that is still nearly three-quarters white, into a diverse American era of widespread cross-cutting identities.

But some community members still see challenges with representation. Latino and African American community members say that more people of color need to get involved, run for office and get elected, so Liberal’s leaders more accurately represent the city’s diversity. That would allow the burden of enriching civic life in the community to be shared more broadly.

Lara acknowledged there are 17 different languages spoken in Liberal, and being inclusive to two of them, English and Spanish, is a step in the right direction.

Eli Svaty, executive director of the Seward County Economic Development Corp., says according to the 2010 census, Seward County had the highest percentage of foreign-born residents in the country.

“We are very rich in culture,” says Svaty, another flagship program participant.

He says Liberal and Seward County attract different cultures because of the nature of the jobs available, and that the community has embraced and supports those cultures. He also says there’s a sense of safety among the immigrant population since many local businesses have Spanish speaking employees front and center.

“Anyone, whether they can speak English or not, can find the services and support that they need from the local business community and even the city and county representatives as well,” Svaty says.

Supporting ‘each other’

One thing that makes progress challenging is that different stakeholders see different problems ranked as the community’s No. 1 challenge.

Some say lack of housing is the main problem. Workforce challenges are seen as an issue, too, while others fault a lack of transparency and the need to better communicate with the public and forge ties between cultures.

Levi Williams, a Liberal transplant who has lived in the community for two years, owns a truck and trailer repair business, Salco Truck and Trailer Repair. He says his biggest challenge as a business owner is hiring qualified people who also have legal status.

He wants to see the city implement a streamlined system where workers can get visas and appropriate documents to work legally.

“If there was something like that, I think there’d be more employees available to me,” says Williams, a flagship program participant. “If we’re desperate for workers and those workers are desperate for a job, and we can’t put that together, that’s a problem. That’s a struggle.”

Amanda Collins, who works at Seward County Broadcasting, sees communication and a lack of online presence as a challenge. She said if one spouse gets a job offer in Liberal, it’s almost impossible for the other spouse to search for a job online or for the couple to go online to find a place to live.

“There’s no website where this data is readily available to them,” says Collins, who is also part of the flagship program. “It really limits growth.”

Housing is the area where Liberal is trying to be particularly aggressive. In addition to the 250 housing units being built over the next five years, Lara says he wants to see more.

“We need to work on getting that up to 100 units per year, hopefully getting to 200 per year,” Lara says. Up the road a bit, neighboring town and competitor Garden City is building 400 new housing units a year, so they could get 4,000 new units in 10 years.

Lara says the units will include both houses and rentals.

“We can fill any at this point,” he says.

Another challenge is getting minorities to become more involved in civic affairs, says Damien Denmark, director of business development for Seward County Development.

Denmark has lived in Liberal for three years and also runs a couple of businesses. He says he’s a member of eight different boards in town.

“It’s the same people, cookie cutter, same demographic, same background,” he says. “And it’s frustrating because we have so many talented minority individuals in this town.”

He adds: “I want a thriving community. I want a town where we thrive on big corporation growth, and we have the housing, and we have the people. But in order for that to happen, we have to have our people here support each other.”

Sustaining Liberal for the ‘long run’

The community, famous for the annual International Pancake Day race and its eponymous Hall of Fame, is hardly starting from scratch.

In addition to the worldwide renown that its 415-yard pancake-flipping run provides, Liberal is also known for the Mid-America Air Museum, Dorothy’s House and the Land of Oz, Ozfest and the Seward County Coronado Museum. There’s a sense that the town is the right size, and there’s enough momentum to counter the climate of decline that many other communities face in western Kansas.

Many people throughout Liberal, population just over 19,000, say that they want the city to grow. They are proud of the diverse culture and rich history and are quick to boast about the offerings of its food trucks.

“We’re big enough so we have some of the amenities that smaller communities don’t,” Svaty says. “We’re still small enough that you can get across town in 10 minutes, and you do know most of the people you’re running into at the grocery store. And it’s nice to have that community.”

Svaty says one of the main reasons people stay in Liberal is because of the good jobs that are offered in agriculture, the oil and gas industry and ethanol production, along with local businesses that support those industries.

“We have some phenomenal businesses, some phenomenal industries that provide good jobs for people. And that is more than just what you’re doing every day,” Svaty says. “People like companies they work for, because they provide them with a good life. So that’s huge.”

Svaty says part of the reason people stick around is the community atmosphere and the entrepreneurship opportunities available in southwest Kansas.

“People really can start from nothing and make a great life for themselves. Not that they can’t do that anywhere, but we have a long track record of people doing that in Seward County,” Svaty says.

Williams, who owns the truck and trailer business, says business in Liberal has been good so far. He also owns a brewery in Arizona and wants to open a brewery in Liberal, partially to give the community a place to gather. Williams also says he wants to see Liberal get a community calendar so everyone can know what’s going on.

“Getting the word out for all of the things that are going on would make people feel like there are more things going on and enhance the sense of community,” he says.

Denmark says Liberal is the small business hub of southwest Kansas and claims it has more small businesses than Garden City or Dodge City, its neighboring rivals.

There’s already a sizable small-business community in Liberal – large enough that the Small Business Administration approved 887 Paycheck Protection Loans in Seward County during the pandemic, totaling more than $38.5 million.

Denmark says growth doesn’t happen overnight.

“Liberal might not be where it needs to be, but we have to understand that it takes time,” he says. “We’re building houses; we’re growing in phases. When you think of growth, you have to think the long game and not the short game. The long game is: How can I sustain the city for retail, housing and my kids in the future of Liberal.”

He adds: “We have so much potential, but again, we have to work together to be one.”

‘Nicest people in the nation’

Karem Gallo is a real estate agent for Heritage Real Estate Group and owns a tiny art supply store and studio, the 200-square-foot Prairie Mermaid and Watercolor studio in Liberal.

Gallo, who has an associate of arts degree from Seward County Community College, has classes for kids during the week and also sells paint and other supplies. She is a member of the Heartland Together group and was appointed by Gov. Laura Kelly in 2020 to the Kansas Creative Arts Industries Commission.

“One of my pillars is to bring more art to southwest Kansas,” Gallo says. “I saw a need in the community and decided to go for it.”

Gallo wants to see Liberal grow and wants to be a better entrepreneur, which is one reason she attended the Heartland Together events. She came to the community at the age of 4 from Mexico with her parents, graduated from Turpin High School in Oklahoma and lives in Turpin.

“I love our community,” Gallo says. “We’re the nicest people in the nation, literally.”

Gallo got emotional at one point when talking about race, immigration and different cultures. She is the eldest of four kids, and before her dad died in 2019, she served as his caretaker.

“I had a trigger. When you look back and think about all the struggles and all the hoops that my parents went through to get me here, it makes me reminisce,” Gallo says. “Leadership usually gets thrown onto that first generation.”

Making something else happen

When asked what kind of community residents want in a year, five years and 10 years, many say they want Liberal to grow, but retain its small, hometown feel, where neighbors know and look out for one another.

Many people also say they want to see more businesses.

“I want people to embrace the people around them and consider them a friend regardless of their economic standing, regardless of what color their skin is, regardless of where they came from,” Collins says.

Teresa Randle, who works at Plains State Bank, agrees.

“I want an all-inclusive community that celebrates our differences and supports growth,” says Randle, a flagship participant. “I feel like we all say we want to grow. We all want new businesses coming into town. But it takes work.”

And bringing those aspirations to reality will require more than talk, says Gallo.

“I feel we need to suck it up,” she says. “The main goal has to be to grow Liberal. And by doing that, we all have to really open our minds and open our hearts and come together as one to make the community grow.”

Does she think that’s possible?

“It’s not going to be tomorrow,” she says. “But long term? I think it’s possible.”

As for Lara, he wants his community to feel like home to everyone who lives there and everyone who is thinking about moving there. His biggest goal is to see Liberal as a residential community first, where retail and industry eventually follow.

“There’s a saying, ‘There’s no place like home,’” Lara says. “Home has many different definitions for people. For some people, it’s their house. For some people it’s their family. For some people it’s their job. So whatever home is for you, that’s what I want Liberal to be.”

Gallo, for one, hopes that the effort continues well after the Heartland Together pilot wraps up. She doesn’t want it to be a situation where nothing else happens. She says she doesn’t want Liberal to be compared to anywhere else in the world, but to stand out on its own.

“I want the 12 of us to actually go out and put this in place,” Gallo says.

A version of this article appears in the Fall 2023 issue ofThe Journal, a publication of the Kansas Leadership Center. To learn more about KLC, visithttp://kansasleadershipcenter.org. Order your copy of the magazine at theKLC Storeorsubscribe to the print edition.

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