Conrads given first MWP Economic Impact Award

Last Thursday night at the Casey Community Center, the message was that it’s “full steam ahead for Casey” as well as Midwest Partnership Economic Development as the organization enters another year of operating for the betterment of Adair and Guthrie counties following its 2020 Annual Meeting.

The highlight of the night was Colleen Mullen Conrad and her husband, Dr. Corey Conrad, receiving the organization’s inaugural Economic Impact Award.

In late 2016, Colleen answered a public call for volunteers to help revitalize Casey, her home town, and she would eventually help establish what would later become the Casey Grant Committee. She also has been heavily involved with the Casey Historical Society.

She has also spent the last year, alongside Corey, working with local contractors and designers to resurrect some of the town’s long abandoned and derelict downtown buildings. This work led to the city’s first catalyst grant clearing in 2019 and the complete renovation of two more century-old buildings on Main St. with the opening of Pioneer’s Pub and Grub and the adjacent Prairie Room. In all, the Conrads own six buildings in Casey.

Matt Wedemeyer of Casey, a MWP board member, presented the award to the Conrads.

“Like many rural communities in the state of Iowa, Casey has struggled with the impact of dwindling population, and [in 2014], we lost our century old community building and $300,000 as a result of arson and embezzelment,” Wedemeyer said. “Vacant buildings dominated the city’s main street in various states of disrepair. Many sat vacant for over a decade and there were no plans in place to repair the damage to these century-old structures. The events of 2014 and the upcoming 2019 150th celebration sprung [Colleen] to action to involve herself with her home community.”

Among Conrad’s other endeavors was helping to piece together Casey’s sesquicentennial history book, which boasts over 700 pages.

During her portion of the keynote speech portion of the meeting, Conrad, a West Des Moines resident currently, spoke of how she first got started reinvesting in Casey.

Conrad, a professional writer, hooked up with Caseyians Judy Wedemeyer and Anita Fagan, who were compiling a book about the history of Casey for The Adair News. While doing her research, she discovered Thomas Duncan, an author who is from Casey. Digging into his work, Conrad reports she became "hooked" and she wrote a piece for Wedemeyer and Fagan's work about Duncan.

“I knew there was no way I would top that. He had done it and it was then and there that I was bound and determined to make sure this history was not lost. Long story short, we can thank Tom Duncan for the crazy Casey native girl who decided to buy a bunch of old buildings downtown,” Conrad said. “It wasn’t only his story that started to push me forward in deciding to get involved in the town a little at a time. It was the people who are still here. They were eager and working hard to make a difference to make Casey much better, and that pushed me even more.”

Conrad said that naysayers also pushed her along the way as some said Casey couldn’t be brought back.

“Ask anybody who knows me, and what really motivates me is a negative comment or the word no. When I told a few people I was going to work to help bring Casey back with many who were already working hard, involved in the community, a couple of people just chuckled at me. Challenge accepted, and here we are,” Conrad said.

Kacey Peterson also gave a portion of the keynote speech for Midwest Partnership.

According to information provided by MWP, Peterson, a mental health counselor based in Stuart who also teaches classes at Drake University, joined forces with the local Boys and Girls Club and several of the local schools to explore grant opportunities for youth-based programming in Guthrie County. She then latched on with Conrad and others in 2015 to establish the Casey Grant Committee and has been heavily involved in Casey’s revitalization efforts ever since.

Peterson said she first became involved in Casey when she reluctantly answered a Facebook post looking for someone who could write grants.

“Colleen was able to convince me to not only help out with the first grant but to not leave. As people came and went in our little committee, we hung strong and continued to do what we could do on a volunteer basis with grant writing trying to see what other resources we could bring into the town,” Peterson said.

Peterson honed in on British-American author and motivational speaker Simon Sinek’s concept of “finding your why” and gave several tips for how MWP attendees could take from what Caseyians have done for their town and apply it to their own communities.

“The premise of what he says is that if you don’t know why you’re doing what you do, why would anybody else care or commit to this thing?,” Peterson said. “The difference between the people who get involved and the people who stay involved is being able to connect with their why. There’s a lot of ways you can give back and a lot of different ways you can get involved in your community, but why are you doing what you’re doing?”