Message to Butte: Play to your strengths

Kenosha, Wis., Mayor John Antaramain has a message for Butte: Play to your strengths, build consensus, work together and don’t be shy in asking for
state and federal dollars.

By Gerard O’Brien of The Montana Standard

Antaramain is the keynote speaker for the second annual Butte’s in Business dinner Tuesday at the Copper King Hotel convention center. His talk
will follow a day of free small business seminars and a business fair at the center.

Antaramain, 47, has been mayor of Kenosha for 10 years. Prior to that, he was a state legis lator.
Kenosha suffered massive layoffs and plant closings similar to Butte’s in the 1980s and 1990s. It was home to an American Motors and later Chrysler
production and engine plant that once employed 5,500 people. It now employs 1,000 in the engine division. Kenosha once had Anaconda Brass, a
brass-fitting subsidiary of the former Anaconda Copper Co. That plant employed 3,000. After a few transfers in owner ship, it finally closed two years
ago.

Butte lost 3,000 primary, and another 2,000 secondary jobs when the Anaconda Smelter and the Berkeley Pit closed in the 1980s.
Kenosha is a town of 90,000 that sits 60 miles north of Chicago on Lake Michigan. It was known as a rust belt town, had heavy industrial sites and
was heavily Democratic and strongly unionized.

“ At one time our structural unemployment — total unemployment, including those off the roles — was 25 percent,” Antaramain said in an interview
at The Montana Standard Monday.
Today the town is on the rebound. Unemployment is 6 percent, the average for Kenosha, he said.
Kenosha has found success in tax increment financing districts, where the city puts up the
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money for infrastructure improvements, lures in small companies and then is paid back at a low tax rate over a number of years.

Many of the industrial sites were known as “ brown fields” that were heavily polluted with oils, lead, PCBs and heavy machinery. That allowed for
state and federal money to flow in for remediation.
“ But we also brought the companies to the table as well,” he said. “ You need to get them to help, or force them to the table.”
Antaramain said he has a good working relationship with Sandy Stash, Atlantic Richfield’s remediation director based in Anaconda. Stash oversees
the Arco/BP remediation work in Butte as well.

“ You need to know where you’re going before you start asking for money, but don’t be shy in asking for it. When you’re towns in trouble, your state
and federal politicians need to step up and help out. That’s what they’re there for,” he said.
Kenosha also enlisted the help of the Urban Land Institute, a nonprofit group of developers, environmentalists and lawyers that can help direct
development.

With advice from the group, the city has invested $31 million to renovate lakefront property that will house up to four museums in the coming years.
“ We expect the return on investment to be up to $100 million,” Antaramain said.
The site now houses a natural history museum, and plans are for a transportation museum, dinosaur museum and Civil War museum in the coming
years. The city also built a new marina and hopes to renovate low-income housing neighborhoods.
The key, Antaramain said, is building consensus among the business community, the government and the citizens.

“ You need to bring people along. You can’t get too far out in front without consensus.”
Kenosha has a development group of 11 citizens from across the spectrum. Once a project is conceived, they seek the public’s comment to build
support before it gets too far down the road.
And pride of the projects is important, too.
“ For years we heard, `that’s just good enough for Kenosha,’ “ he said. “ Well, it’s not good enough. Standards are higher now. You have to improve
your image. Don’t settle for second best.”

The dinner starts at 7 p.m. Tuesday. A no-host cocktail hour starts at 6 p.m. Tickets for the dinner are $15. For tickets, call the Butte Chamber of
Commerce at 723-3177.

http://www.mtstandard.com/newslocal/lnews1.html