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Among more than 500 incorporated municipalities in Nebraska, only 40 have been recognized as Economic Development Certified communities. Dale Johnson wanted to find out what’s going on in the Valley County community of 2,300 by talking with Caleb Pollard, who leads economic development at the county and city levels.
Caleb Pollard: It's a community, in my opinion, that does not look at some of the challenges from the past, especially the 80s farm crisis, as a defining feature for its future. It's also in what I would consider a geologic and geographic beautiful area. I mean, there's a lot of recreation up here. We have four lakes and rivers that that were really attractive to my wife and I when we decided to move here in 2008. We have really beautiful natural amenities that give people, I think, a lot of opportunity to enjoy rural living. The cost of living is still quite competitive, and there's a lot of job opportunities up here, both for those that are working in the in the local business community, or those that that choose to locate up here and work remotely.
Dale Johnson: Ord is a community of about 2,300 people, but as I read over the 2025 annual report, it reads like an analysis from a much larger urban area. Taking on housing quality and affordability is part of the language. Downtown redevelopment, workforce, attraction, investment in enterprise, talk about what Ord, and in a larger scope Valley County, have going for it that makes objectives attainable for Ord.
Pollard: What I like to start with is usually defining us by our limitations, because I think that actually creates a positive environment for us to focus on what we can control and what we can do. We're at the terminal end of a rail spur. We're 75 miles from the interstate. We have no major airports or highways that come through the area, so to that degree, we're a bit isolated and remote from more urban communities. And so that's created an environment where we've had to rely on each other to grow. There's been leadership that's committed to 26 years now of community and economic development focus. We think that we can compete with urban environments and urban communities when it comes to, I think the most important thing for rural communities, which is talent attraction. We have had ongoing conversations with our area high school students for those 26 years and we've built proactive pipelines, whether through workforce delivery or through small business finance, to actually provide the resources for those individuals to come back. And when you couple that with our natural amenities that I had mentioned and cost of living, you can have a pretty wonderful life out here.
Johnson: In most communities, the downtown is the heartbeat. So as downtown goes, so goes the community. Impressive numbers coming out of Ord. Thirty-eight investments in the downtown business district. Focus on that for a moment.
Pollard: What we've done is take kind of a comprehensive approach to it. Our most recent approach isn't just like commerce, but also looking at how do you get people living downtown and providing additional housing inventory for those that would want to be in a downtown business district. And so we started what we call the Downtown Ord Living Tour back in October 2024 and I thought maybe we would have 15 to 20 individuals that would want to do a walking tour of our second story buildings downtown. And we had over 60 show up.
Johonson: We've talked about the broken window theory, how a broken window can be symbolic of neglect, community not really caring. And I wanted to bring that up Caleb, because I found that Ord is in the process, or has taken it upon itself, to clean up some deteriorated properties.
Pollard: We will contact property owners of abandoned or vacant properties and just ask if they're willing to sell so that we can clean those properties up. And then what we do is put them back on the market for redevelopment efforts in both commercial and residential properties. And I had kind of an “a-ha” moment when my sons were walking home from elementary school many years ago, and they were walking by an abandoned old property, and they were talking about how scary it was, but also like, just how bad it looked. And I was like, well, if a 12 year old is seeing this, what do the adults see? And so I started doing walking tours of neighborhoods, just looking at properties that we wanted to potentially reach out to as a result of that over the years and that's how we've kind of picked up traction. We're paying market rate for these properties. We're mitigating the abandoned structures that are there. We're flipping them for redevelopment purposes. And then we've seen some success with that infill development, especially in the housing side.
Johnson: Caleb, you told me that Ord needs more room to grow. Not many communities with a population the size of Ord can say that.
Pollard: That's right. On our square in downtown, we have one empty building in downtown. We have limited commercial availability for new business starts. That's actually been a challenge for us, we have less inventory than we have inquiries on new business starts from young entrepreneurs in our community. And what we're working on right now is a couple different efforts to expand that commercial capacity so that we can accommodate growth opportunity.
Johnson: Caleb, thank you very much for bringing to our attention the growth and the potential of Ord Nebraska,
Pollard: Thank you, Dale. I appreciate the opportunity to tell our story today.
Johnson: Caleb Pollard is Executive Director of the Valley County Economic Development Board, also the Ord Area Chamber of Commerce and the Valley County Tourism Advisory Committee, joining me on Nebraska Public Media. I'm Dale Johnson.