Hitting its stride

TwispWorks at 10 is a model for a creative rural economy

TwispWorks isn’t celebrating its 10th anniversary this Saturday (June 29) simply because “10” is a nice, round number. Ten years is more than a milestone. It is a deadline.

Executive Director Don Linnertz knew from the beginning of his tenure, almost four years ago, that he needed to make TwispWorks self-sustaining by the time it turned 10. The anonymous donor who paid for the property in July 2009 told him that if the campus generated enough revenue to cover its expenses by 2019, then the donor would hand over the deed to the property without needing to be paid back.

Linnertz and his staff got a solid handle on what TwispWorks’ costs were. They doubled revenues, filled empty spaces and built more space, and hit their goal.

Not one to hog all the credit, Linnertz expressed gratitude toward the directors who preceded him — the husband-and-wife team of Maggie Coon and Mark Wolf-Armstrong, and Amy Stork.

“It’s been like a well-orchestrated relay race, where the right people at the right time have always emerged and taken the baton, and taken the organization where it needed to go at that phase of its development,” Linnertz said.

Former directors and other notables from TwispWorks past and present will be on hand this Saturday (June 29) as the property deed is ceremoniously unveiled at the 10th anniversary celebration. The event takes place from noon to 1:30 p.m. at the TwispWorks plaza, 502 S. Glover St.

Early days

The U.S. Forest Service announced in March 2007 that it intended to sell its 6.4-acre former ranger station in Twisp. The town supported the formation of a public development authority (PDA) as a potential buyer. The PDA’s first job was to determine whether it could make good use of the property, and if it could even afford it.

The PDA concluded that yes, it could pay the mortgage, as long as it could get a loan.

The Forest Service put the property up for bids in fall 2008 and again in early 2009, during the recession. The PDA was the only bidder, and the sale closed on July 13, 2009. For $1 million, the PDA got the land and 17 buildings that had been abandoned for years and were in disrepair.

The money came from a loan of sorts. The anonymous donor who put up the $1 million asked at the time only that the campus be used for the public good. Eventually, the donor said that if the campus became self-sustaining within 10 years of the purchase, he or she would forgive the loan.

The PDA went to work right away. It hired Coon and Wolf-Armstrong, and with community input established some principles, or pillars, to define what the campus would contain: education, agriculture, arts and culture, and green and innovative technologies.

The community was involved in the planning every step of the way, said Coon, who knows a thing or two about public involvement. Coon had already made a name for herself in the Methow Valley, spearheading opposition dating back to 1974 to a proposed Aspen-like ski resort in the upper valley. After her stint with the PDA, Coon was a leader of the Methow Headwaters Campaign, which protected 340,000 acres of the upper valley from industrial mining.

“In my experience, people here in the Methow Valley really recognize the opportunity to speak up to define our future,” Coon said in an interview last week. She was referring to ski resorts, mining and a 6.4-acre void in the middle of Twisp that could have been developed into anything. A group from Bend, Oregon, was proposing a mini resort complex for the vacated Forest Service site. There were rumors — maybe unfounded — of a paintball facility.

“There was a sense of urgency to take charge,” Coon said. “As has happened over and over again, a group of concerned citizens got together to try to figure it out.”

The community’s wishes and the property were in hand. But before the vision could be realized, the PDA would need to make the campus habitable.

“The buildings were in pretty sad shape. They’d been more or less empty since the late 1990s,” said Ray Johnston, an architect and current president of the TwispWorks board who has been involved with the campus since its inception.

Pests had taken up residence. Pipes leaked. Heating in buildings was inadequate or altogether absent. Water wasn’t in place to keep the trees and other vegetation alive.

“Mark and Maggie found those problems, worked them out and fixed them,” Johnston said.

Money helped, too. The PDA received government grants and private donations to hire staff, pay for the early planning and fix the buildings.

After a little life was breathed into the site, the PDA board in mid-2010 was ready to give it a name. Community members proposed about two dozen suggestions.

Wolf-Armstrong’s submission won the day, as Coon tells the story. She convened an “informal focus group” of family members in her living room and read the suggestions aloud.

“We got to ‘TwispWorks’ and the room lit up,” Coon recalled. “People just said, ‘That’s it!’”

The PDA board enthusiastically agreed.

A blank canvas

As TwispWorks was getting off the ground, Wolf-Armstrong and Coon stepped down as co-directors. Coon said that when she returned to the Methow Valley, shortly before the TwispWorks project, she had intended to retire. In 2011, she decided to really retire. TwispWorks named as interim director Amy Stork, who had been hired two years earlier as a consultant to help develop the site’s master plan.

But Stork was a good fit for the job, and the “interim” tag was removed from her title.

“The ideas were sprouting all the time about what you could do with this property,” Stork said. “I have a personality that likes to take ideas and make them into something real.”

Of the four pillars meant to define TwispWorks, education and arts had the most momentum early on, Stork said.

Education and culture were represented in the Methow Valley Interpretive Center, on the northwest corner of campus, and in Liberty Bell High School’s welding class, which is still based at TwispWorks.

Artists, meanwhile, were a natural fit.

“TwispWorks was a blank canvas. Who better to occupy that space than the artists?” Stork said. “Artists are willing to take risks on new things because that is the nature of art.”

One of the early artists to take a chance on TwispWorks was Sarah Jo Lightner, who still has her original Glitter and Grit silver studio at the southeast corner of campus.

Lightner, who is executive director of the Confluence Gallery, said TwispWorks remains an important place for artists.

“Without TwispWorks, where would all of these people be making their art?” she said. “Maybe in their homes, which wouldn’t be making this a vital rural arts community.”

Under Stork, a public development authority was becoming unwieldy for a burgeoning art, education and business hub. The state required the PDA, as a government entity, to follow accounting requirements deemed too burdensome, especially given its modest revenue stream at the time. Even though the PDA never collected taxes, TwispWorks wasn’t allowed to hand out promotional T-shirts because gifting of public funds was prohibited.

“There was a real need to be entrepreneurial,” Stork said. “It’s difficult for public agencies to be entrepreneurial and still comply with all the rules that apply to public money.”

Management of TwispWorks was transferred to a nonprofit, the TwispWorks Foundation, in 2014. The PDA still exists today as the owner of the two buildings used for the community solar program. The PDA also is in charge of the rural broadband initiative TwispWorks is undertaking.

The final leg

The effort to improve broadband service in the Methow Valley is typical of the latest stage of TwispWorks’ evolution. The organization is no longer just about the old Forest Service campus. It now strives to improve the economy of the entire Methow Valley.

Another example of this effort is the Methow Investment Network, which connects investors with local small businesses. Linnertz reported in May that the network had distributed $1.4 million in loans so far.

Johnston, the board president, said the PDA from the beginning was intended to promote economic development throughout the valley. Linnertz was able to carry out that original mission because the campus had found its stride as the current director assumed the role in September 2015.

Today’s TwispWorks also collaborates more with other nonprofits. Recently, it worked with Room One and Little Star Montessori School to explore the economic challenges faced by people who try to make a living in the valley.

As for the campus itself, it has achieved the donor’s goal of self-sustainability while also staying true, broadly speaking, to the original four pillars.

Those pillars are what make TwispWorks unique and not just a shopping mall, Johnston said.

“We want to make sure that those elements are always thought of as part of our economic vitality,” he said.

Some of the pillars have been runaway successes. Around half the TwispWorks partners are artists, or makers of some kind. Education grew under Linnertz with the opening of the Methow Valley School District’s Independent Learning Center and the Little Star South Collaborative for infants and toddlers. Agriculture, or at least some part of the farm-to-table chain, is reflected in the gardens on campus, the commercial kitchen and the nearly completed brewery.

The “green and innovative technology” pillar has been harder to realize, Linnertz conceded. The original vision for LEED-certified buildings and small-scale manufacturers in renewable energy has not yet materialized. However, Linnertz would count the solar panels and the broadband initiative as two examples of the technology pillar.

With the campus fully occupied and the property deed in hand, TwispWorks will continue to focus on the valley’s broader economy. Linnertz said the goal is to “evolve our subject-matter expertise” on the local economy and turn that into new programs that will have the most impact.

Ten years ago, Twisp’s economy was at a crossroads. The town relied on the 400 jobs at Wagner Mill until it closed in 1985. The Forest Service employed 100 in Twisp until the ranger station closed.

TwispWorks has replaced most of those old Forest Service jobs and has created a place to eat, drink, shop and play that is not a cookie-cutter mall.

“TwispWorks is something of a model that I think other rural towns could look to as a way to help transition from what used to be an extraction economy,” Johnston said. “It’s a real example of a way rural towns can become vital in what is a new economy and a new world, compared to 30 or 40 years ago.”