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TOM WEBER: Good morning. I'm Tom Weber, and this is a Daily Circuit Special. I'm in International Falls, and that's where we're spending this hour with MPR's Ground Level project. Now, Reporter Jennifer Vogel has been following this town's story leading up to and ever since a recent big layoff at the major employer in town. Her series of stories is called "Rethinking a Company Town." The company is Boise, and Jennifer Vogel is here. Hello. How are you?

JENNIFER VOGEL: I'm good.

TOM WEBER: We're walking here on 3rd Street, which is basically a or the main street here for International Falls in the Downtown. And we're about a month and a half since the last of these layoffs took effect, Jennifer. It was 250-something. What was--

JENNIFER VOGEL: 265.

TOM WEBER: 265 layoffs at the plant. And I'm actually looking here. That was a third of the workforce. And this is--

JENNIFER VOGEL: That's right.

TOM WEBER: There's an analysis I'm looking at here from the University of Minnesota. Each of these jobs-- what was it? They paid an average of $90,000.

JENNIFER VOGEL: That was the average, but it included benefits. So the average salary wouldn't be quite that high. But it included a lot of people who had worked there for a long time. These are union jobs, and the wages go up. And so they're considered some of the best paying jobs in town.

TOM WEBER: Major impact. We can't--

JENNIFER VOGEL: Major impact.

TOM WEBER: --lose sight of that.

JENNIFER VOGEL: Millions of dollars in impact.

TOM WEBER: And it's really interesting because we're on 3rd Street. But just a block over, we just turn to our left here, the way we're facing, the Boise plant is there. It's both physically and really metaphorically an imposing--

JENNIFER VOGEL: Yes, it is. It's the center of town. And people say that when you're driving into town they wonder, how are things going? And if they saw the puff of smoke at the top of the mill, they knew things were going OK. And if they didn't see the puff of smoke, they would start worrying.

TOM WEBER: On the corner here is a coffee shop called the Coffee Landing, and we stepped in there a little while ago. And you really get a sense of the importance of the plant just by talking to people there.

[SIDE CONVERSATION]

STEPHEN BRIGGS: My name is Stephan Briggs, originally from International Falls here. I'm an instructor at Rainy River community college.

STEPHANIE HEINLE: I'm Stephanie Heinle, and I'm the owner of the Coffee Landing Cafe.

RAEANNE CONAT: My name is RaeAnne Conat, and I am the owner of Swanky Sweet Pea. We are within walking distance of Boise Cascade.

STEPHEN BRIGGS: My dad worked there for 30 years.

RAEANNE CONAT: My in-laws families work in the mill. We feed them.

STEPHEN BRIGGS: I have multiple, multiple friends that work there.

STEPHANIE HEINLE: And I've even worked a summer in the mill.

WARD MERRILL: My name is Ward Merrill. I'm executive director at the Backus Community Center.

JOANN SMITH: I'm Joann Smith. In 2008, I came up here to do a co-op through school. And I got a job offer.

WARD MERRILL: I guess I wouldn't be in the Falls if it wasn't for the mill. My grandparents came up here in 1920.

JOANN SMITH: And I recently got laid off in October. My husband and I decided to take over a bar. And so we now own the Viking Bar in town, which is within walking distance of Boise.

[SIDE CONVERSATION]

TOM WEBER: We talked earlier about the presence of this plant, and you see these huge smokestacks when you drive into town, Jen, and this big mill-- it's this blue and white building, and it really is just at the center of everything.

JENNIFER VOGEL: It is. I mean, you can look down every street, and that's what you see. And the rhythms of this mill, the shifts, the paydays, everything have really determined the rhythms of this city for more than a century. And even the sounds and the smells are just really woven into daily life here.

TOM WEBER: And then you step inside the mill. We're walking along machine number 3 at the mill. It's huge. It's actually hard to fathom that there's a newer, even larger machine at this mill, machine number 1. Jeff Bernard is one of the 580 workers remaining at the mill. He works on machine number 1 and has been at the mill for 26 years.

JEFF BERNARD: It's tough to lose some of the younger employees that were new hires, lost a lot of folks that you're passionate about because you spent half your life with them. So it's tough to see them leave, but we're hearing good news from them. They're here, and things aren't that bad with the federal assistance that they were seeing. And so that end of it was good.

TOM WEBER: Have you heard about anyone who's been laid off trying to find another job? And is that-- how is that going?

JEFF BERNARD: I think there are some issues with some people trying to find work. I think, in our community, it's pretty tight. A lot of people were born and raised here and didn't want to leave.

So I think that's tough because this community is not-- I think we're working on economic development, but it's not necessarily this-- icebox of the nation is some ways not the destination you want to-- that people want to live in. But for the most part, I think things are going pretty good. Yeah, I'm sure there's people that are struggling and, it's going to take some time.

[SOMBER MUSIC]

TOM WEBER: Just a block away from the mill, back at the coffee shop is where we met one of those people who is still struggling.

BETH PETERSON: My name is Beth Peterson. I am originally from International Falls. I am the office manager with Falls License Bureau, the DMV in town here. My tie to the mill is my husband had worked there. He was one of them that was laid off, one of the salaried people that was laid off back in-- [SIGHS] well, he actually left the beginning of July. I used to work in the mill. Part of my family worked in the mill, and I'm not sure how much longer I'll actually be here, because he is now no longer with the mill.

TOM WEBER: Beth's husband, Blake, now spends his work weeks in Buhl down on the iron range, away from his family and home on Rainy Lake. Blake inherited that home from his parents. It's the big reason he moved back to International Falls after spending 15 years in the metro.

BETH PETERSON: When I married my husband, I thought that we were going to live together. I really thought that we were going to be a family.

[LAUGHTER]

And somebody had another idea.

JENNIFER VOGEL: And I married a man to live under the same roof.

BETH PETERSON: Yeah.

JENNIFER VOGEL: Wait a minute.

BETH PETERSON: And there's a lot of people that do live that way. I just don't-- I'm still struggling on how to figure out how to do that because I don't like it very much. [LAUGHS] I don't like it very much.

TOM WEBER: It's probably worth noting here a little history, Jen. This is not the first time there's been a big layoff here in International Falls related to the paper industry.

JENNIFER VOGEL: That's right. In the mid-'80s, a division called Insulite closed. And several hundred people lost their jobs at that point.

TOM WEBER: You've done a lot of reporting about this, though. We hear a lot about rural, smaller towns in greater Minnesota. And there are job losses. Is this the same as we hear throughout the state, or is there something unique going on?

JENNIFER VOGEL: Well, it's true. A lot of smaller cities and towns are dealing with a loss of manufacturing or the fact that farms have become bigger and more industrialized. Or maybe whatever the product out of town or city made isn't in demand anymore. So a lot of places are trying to figure out, how do we remake our economy or supplement it or make a way for people to have jobs and stay in town?

And in that way, International Falls isn't any different than a lot of places in the state. But what is different here is how far International Falls is from other cities and other towns. There really isn't another city of size within 100 miles of this city.

So people here are on their own, and it's harder to collaborate with other communities and figure out, what kind of synergies can we have? It's harder to draw a big customer base if you want to start a business. There are just a lot of obstacles related to the location of this city on the Canadian border up here.

TOM WEBER: We should also say in the timeline, in the history here, these layoffs were announced earlier this spring. And then after that, before they actually took effect, Boise got a new owner.

JENNIFER VOGEL: The Packaging Corporation of America, which is based in Illinois but has a couple of Mills here in the state, they're not unfamiliar to Minnesota, completed their purchase of Boise at the end of October. And that includes the mill here, so the mill has a new owner.

TOM WEBER: And just last week, the CEO of that company was in town here in International Falls.

JENNIFER VOGEL: That's right. And they were meeting with the mayor. This person and others as well, meeting with the mayor, meeting with employees at the mill. I think people were somewhat reassured by that. From what I hear, the CEO is encouraging and likes what's happening here. But I think people are still wary, and they don't really know what's going to happen. And they probably won't for several months to come.

TOM WEBER: I was out here the other day with the mayor, and we went out to some hunting shacks, actually. As you know, deer season just opened. And we were talking about this. He was talking about meeting with the CEO and saying that he came away pretty optimistic as well.

BOB ANDERSON: And I feel certainly much more confident having spent a couple of hours with Mark Kowlzan, the CEO of Packaging Corporation of America. So I think that he has got a genuine interest in making this paper mill go.

TOM WEBER: Those were mayor Bob Anderson's thoughts as he piloted his Lincoln Navigator SUV down a sparsely filled highway toward a friend's hunting shack. The word "shack" has a range of meanings here.

BOB ANDERSON: Bring a little hors d'oeuvres and some beer in.

TOM WEBER: Gotta do that.

BOB ANDERSON: This first shack we visit is more cabin. It has heat, electricity, and indoor bathroom, a six-burner stove in the kitchen, and separate rooms for sleeping.

Help yourself to your snacks here, too.

The one-eyed German wire-haired pointer, Abby, holds court over the men taking a break here from hunting to watch the packers and down some brew.

Merlin!

MERLIN: Yeah, how are you doing?

BOB ANDERSON: Good to see you, man.

TOM WEBER: Merlin is here. He's 84 years old and gave Boise 46 and 1/2 years. Also here, two executives at true star, a credit union based in I-Falls. One of the execs, Dave Cronin, goes by the name Snowman.

DAVE CRONIN: The first time I ever played golf out here, the first three holes of golf, I'm playing with one of the local bankers. And I shot three eights in a row. He says, you're just a snowman. Well, there you are. I've been dabbed the Snowman for 27 years now. International Falls is the land of nicknames. So there's Stickman, Snowman, Pancho, Bugsy, Chopper, Fallzy--

SPEAKER 2: Crazy.

DAVE CRONIN: --crazy.

TOM WEBER: It's probably not too much exaggeration to say hunting in this part of the state is almost as important as the paper mills. The mills have provided jobs to generations, but the hunting brings together those generations. Deer opener is as much about family and friends, sometimes more than the holidays. And family is top of mind for Cronin when you discuss the recent layoffs.

DAVE CRONIN: Both of my adult children are in the-- work in the paper mill. And one was-- one was one of the folks initially that was scheduled to be laid off, but there were enough early retirement incentives so that he was able to get back in the mill. And so these are wonderful, well-paying jobs. So--

TOM WEBER: What have you heard from them about how the mood is inside the plant now that these layoffs are in effect?

DAVE CRONIN: Well, I think it's kind of a-- some of those folks that were fortunate enough to stay have felt a little maybe guilty of still having a position. And some folks are going--

TOM WEBER: Still, the early retirement packages and that recent visit by the new CEO have injected optimism, including optimism that the 500 remaining jobs at the mill will remain. And besides, you also hear I-Falls went through an even larger layoff in the 1980s. That was 500 layoffs, and the town got through it.

But Paul Nevanen says it's important not to let that optimism free the town from an important opportunity. Nevanen directs the Koochiching Economic Development Authority, which is charged with finding ways to bolster the economies in I-Falls and Koochiching County. Don't forget, Nevanen will tell you, 265 very good-paying jobs are gone. Some people have already moved somewhere else for work, and others could soon follow.

PAUL NEVANEN: You can't get lazy. Because in this competitive environment, every community from Iron Range on-- you look at our want ads in the newspaper. I mean, they-- people figured out that there's this workforce that some people were displaced. We got crystal sugar. We've got people from-- you mentioned the mines and--

SPEAKER 2: Other paper mills.

PAUL NEVANEN: Other paper mills, I'll call the advertising--

BOB ANDERSON: The Madawaska main calling up and saying, geez, have you got any papermakers over there? Because we need them-- we need them--

SPEAKER 2: So they're poaching.

PAUL NEVANEN: Yeah, they're poaching employees, which is the biggest asset. Yeah.

BOB ANDERSON: Marvin Windows.

PAUL NEVANEN: DigiKey over there.

SPEAKER 2: Polaris.

BOB ANDERSON: Polaris, yes.

SPEAKER 2: They're all--

PAUL NEVANEN: So you can't get lazy.

SPEAKER 2: There's more.

PAUL NEVANEN: Where is it?

BOB ANDERSON: This is 10 Randall.

TOM WEBER: Back on the road, Nevanen and Mayor Bob Anderson and I are all heading to another hunting shack that I'm told is more rustic than the first one. But first, we have to find that shack. It's proving a little difficult, so my hosts have called up another guy with a nickname for help.

BOB ANDERSON: Poncho?

PONCHO: Yep? Yeah?

BOB ANDERSON: We're still searching.

TOM WEBER: Poncho does finally get us there.

BOB ANDERSON: All right, we're just going past that property right now.

PONCHO: OK, go South about-- oh, about 1 and 1/2 miles.

BOB ANDERSON: OK.

TOM WEBER: And we arrive soon at Steve Shermoen's shack.

BOB ANDERSON: Fixing dinner?

MICHAEL SHERMOEN: Yeah, getting the vittles.

STEVE SHERMOEN: Yeah, just we got-- we got prime rib in, and--

TOM WEBER: This one has an outhouse, no indoor bathroom. But there's still a stove, heat, electricity, and television. Shermoen is also International Fall's city attorney.

STEVE SHERMOEN: It's been hard for me to see our community slip in comparison to some of the surrounding communities. So I think everybody's in survival mode and helping everybody else out. And it's a great community from that standpoint. There have been boom times and bust times, and we're hoping we'll get back to the better times again.

TOM WEBER: As we talk, Shermoen's oldest son prepares food nearby. Michael Shermoen is 39 and says about half his friends have worked at the mill did lose their job. Half didn't.

MICHAEL SHERMOEN: A couple have already gotten back in, got called back. And so it's-- I haven't seen as much worry as I thought there might be. There was obviously, six weeks ago or, well, six months ago when they first announced it, everybody was really scared. And by the time it came, October 1 came around, it was just almost business as usual. Everybody knew what the deal was and see what happens.

STEVE SHERMOEN: I think the community's cautiously optimistic that we'll find a way through this. We've been through it before, and I think we'll survive this. It's just a matter of how.

TOM WEBER: Mayor Bob Anderson thinks a lot about that how.

BOB ANDERSON: Well, if you have-- if there's opportunities, though, people will come back. And I think that's the key.

TOM WEBER: So does Paul Nevanen, the economic development director. This has been the quintessential company town for more than a century. But if there's going to be a future, Nevanen says it's by diversifying the economy. Even if the mill stays open forever, find something else as a supplement. One idea Nevanen is exploring is how to utilize a rail line that crosses the US-Canada border at International Falls. No takers yet, but he keeps looking.

PAUL NEVANEN: All of a sudden now, we make sense because we're in the middle of the continent. We're at the main crossing for CN rail. How do you take it, advantage of that, make it an opportunity?

[MUSIC PLAYING]

TOM WEBER: I'm Tom Weber. This is a Daily Circuit Special. We're coming to you this hour from International Falls, where we're with the MPR Ground Level project. And we're looking at this one community and its future in the wake of 265 recent layoffs of high-paying jobs at the Boise paper mill.

Back in downtown, International Falls with reporter Jennifer Vogel here, we're actually now a block off of the main street here. Jennifer, I'm actually-- this is the Boise plant.

JENNIFER VOGEL: That is it--

TOM WEBER: I'm actually standing--

JENNIFER VOGEL: --the enormous mill.

TOM WEBER: It's a massive building here. But as we look to the future, what are the challenges for International Falls?

JENNIFER VOGEL: Well, the couple of main things-- besides the distance of this city from other cities, its sheer isolation. You have the fact that this city, really, for more than 100 years has really relied very, very heavily on this mill. It grew up around the mill.

This has been the main employer in town for over 100 years. And there have been some efforts to build other types of jobs, and there are other jobs here. But it really still is a mill town. And so they need to-- people here think that they need to transition away from that to some degree, and they have a ways to go before that happens.

The other thing is that the population here is quite old when you look at just how it breaks down. You have about 20% of the population that's 65 or older, which is much higher than the state average. So you have those issues as well. You don't have the income-generating potential that some other communities have.

TOM WEBER: And on the other end of the age spectrum, this came up. I was over at Falls High School. And the principal there, Tim Everson, was telling me, back in the '70s, you would have graduating high school classes of 300. And this year, they're under 100 for a graduating class.

[CAR BEEPING]

One class that Falls High School has high hopes for is this engineering class, taught by two teachers, math teacher, Timm Ringhofer, and industrial tech teacher, David Olson.

TIMM RINGHOFER: All right, get your assignment out for today, please.

TOM WEBER: Today, these high schoolers are using clay, copper wire, and LED lights to teach fifth graders about circuits, not a daily occurrence, mind you.

TIMM RINGHOFER: Be ready to tell them what a series circuit is, what a parallel circuit is. And show them how it works.

TOM WEBER: The idea for this class started on the Iron Range at Itasca Community College, and teacher Timm Ringhofer says it's rooted in one idea.

TIMM RINGHOFER: How do we keep people that live on the range? How do we get them to stay here? Because the mines and everybody are looking at the fact that the engineers that they're bringing in, they're bringing them in from the cities. And they're bringing them in from other countries and everywhere else. And they know that there's people who want to live right here on the range, that want to live in Northern Minnesota and could definitely become engineers. And are students, are high school students even aware that they could get these kinds of jobs and stay right here?

TOM WEBER: Now, there are always high schoolers, like 11th grader [? Dillon ?] Strife, who can't wait to get out and never come back.

DILLON STRIFE: Yeah, especially with Boise kind of shutting down because the town just gets smaller and smaller, so we're just going to move somewhere else.

TOM WEBER: So the fact that they had these layoffs at the plant, that didn't really affect your decision. It sounds like you always wanted to get out.

DILLON STRIFE: Yeah, I always did. My mom worked there and took a buyout there. And now she's going to go back to school. But yeah, I've always wanted to leave.

TOM WEBER: Why?

DILLON STRIFE: I don't know. [CHUCKLES] It's just turned into a retirement home over the years. I just don't want to be here.

TOM WEBER: But school officials hope classes like this one in engineering will help connect students who would like to come back after college with this town by pointing out the kinds of engineering that can happen here in falls, either at the mill or elsewhere. Still, pointing out that connection only does so much. Students still wonder if there'd be something for them to come back to, like 11th grader Ben [? Erickson. ?]

BEN ERICKSON: I want to go out of town to go to college, but I'd like to come back here after college. Want a job here. I don't know. I like the town. I like the outdoors. And--

TOM WEBER: Do you think there'll be something for you after college when you come back here?

BEN ERICKSON: I don't know. That's what concerns me. It might be tough to find a job here.

VALERIE WITHERS: I think it's a great idea to go into engineering. It's definitely a good career to have.

TOM WEBER: Do you want to stay in I-Falls after-- I mean, maybe go off to college, but maybe come back?

VALERIE WITHERS: I might. It's a possibility. I could. Depends on where I get the best job, I guess.

SPENCER JESSEN: It's like, I like it around here, but it's just-- it seems like with the mill-- hard to say what it's going on. But it's going to be-- it's going to be challenging to stay in town.

TOM WEBER: You think so?

SENCER JESSEN: Yeah, I think it's going to-- I hope it doesn't, but I think it's going to end up that way.

TOM WEBER: So you'd like to stay in town. You're just not sure you'll be able to.

SPENSER JESSEN: Yeah. I wasn't actually born here, but I've basically grown up here. I've had most of my high school life here, and it's going to be hard to leave.

TOM WEBER: You also heard 10th grader Spencer Jessen and 11th grader Valerie Withers there. It's not just the teens in I-Falls thinking about whether they'll come back. Adults like Janelle Feller also look to the school.

JANELLE FELLER: We've raised the children that have the talent to save International Falls. We're no different than Thief River, than Roseau. Marvin Windows, Polaris, Arctic Cat-- those are all done by local natives that came home, planted a seed and, from that, grew an industry. And I believe that it's going to be one of our children, our collective children-- several-- it may take several that's going to save-- that's going to find the solution.

TOM WEBER: As hopeful as that sounds, there is that undeniable demographic problem. Fewer students mean fewer people who might even want to come back one day. It also means less money from the state to run the schools in I-Falls. I talked about these and other matters with Falls I-Falls School principal Tim Everson.

TIM EVERSON: We've always struggled to find areas that students can get into if they want to stay in town. And namely, it was either the paper mill. Or if they got into health care, and we've looked at a number of different avenues there. We used to have a health occupations course where we worked with the hospital, and that was one way that we told students, If that was something that you wanted to do, there is an opportunity.

If you get into law enforcement, you get into education. And there's not a whole lot of other opportunities in town. I mean, there's some smaller businesses, but those are kind of the main employers. So those were the things that, if they really want to come back, and we've talked to different students that, you have to think about what it is that you can train yourself for to be able to come back and get a job. We're very limited if you compare us to a larger city.

TOM WEBER: I wonder about the demographics, though, of I-Falls. People talk about how 20, 25 years ago, you'd have a graduating class of 300. You're down to around a hundred. I think a couple of years ago, you were even under a hundred.

TIM EVERSON: We're under a hundred right now.

TOM WEBER: You're under a hundred now?

TIM EVERSON: Yeah.

TOM WEBER: I mean, that's a big hit to take. And even if all hundred did come back and helped be in I-Falls and help that economy, that's still a smaller pie than it was 25 years ago.

TIM EVERSON: It is. We have an aging community, so we still have population. We just don't have the number of kids. And that population is retired, more retired.

TOM WEBER: This is a term they use in education. You're declining enrollment district, and that means less money for you from the state. And does that create a spiral of families not wanting to come here, because it keeps getting smaller and smaller?

TIM EVERSON: Yeah, it can. And I'm actually meeting with a family tomorrow who are looking at moving up. And those are the difficulties. When we have a declining population in the school, you're offerings then become-- they tend to become more limited. And then the more limited they become when you have a family that's looking moving in from a larger city that have more opportunities, that's a sacrifice that they're going to have to make if they're going to move into a community like this.

TOM WEBER: Are you still in a cutting phase? A lot of districts with the recession just got really hit. And this year, though, there was a big boost. So I don't know where you are right now on whether you need to be cutting still.

TIM EVERSON: Well, there was a boost in funding. However, we're looking at declining enrollment still. And I don't think we've really felt the effects yet of the mill. So I think throughout the course of the next six months, we're going to see more and more families that are leaving town as they are able to find new jobs.

So I don't even-- I don't think we know exactly where we're going to end up yet. So we are taking a look at numbers the superintendent actually presented to the school board last Monday night, some possible reductions. The superintendent put a list together and is taking a look at class sizes.

We don't want them to go way up, but we need to take a look at whether or not we can afford to make some reduction in staff or class sizes aren't going to go through the roof. He put on a couple nonrevenue-generating sports as a possibility. There were no sports named. He just mentioned sports that don't generate a gate.

TOM WEBER: To your earlier point, if you're meeting with that family tomorrow and their son or daughter plays that sport, and that sport might be going away, that's the domino effect you're talking about.

TIM EVERSON: It would be. And I don't even know what that could be, but we need to discuss that.

TOM WEBER: But is it your educated guess that this will continue to decline as an enrollment in this city?

TIM EVERSON: I think we're going to see some. I've heard from people that there are going to be more people moving into the Dakotas or at least working for the week or 10 days and then coming home. They may stay located here, so I think we'll see more and more people working out in North Dakota and coming back on their days off. But it's hard to-- it's hard to predict.

TOM WEBER: Coming up, you'll hear more ideas people in International Falls are discussing to redefine the town. But first, we're going to get an update of this hour's news.

PHIL PICARDI: Thanks, Tom. President Obama today discusses strategy with health insurance executives.

The meeting comes a day after Obama announced a change to the law. The president wants insurance companies to offer people another year of coverage under their existing plans. The US is sending about a thousand more troops and additional ships and aircraft to the Philippines to help with recovery from last Friday's typhoon.

An aircraft carrier is already stationed off the coast, and helicopters have been dropping food and water hard-to-reach areas. The death toll from the typhoon has jumped to more than 3,600 people. Toronto City Council has voted to strip mayor Rob Ford of some of his powers.

It's the latest attempt to box him in after he rebuffed pressure to resign over his drinking and drug habits and erratic behavior. The motion was approved in a 39 to 3 vote this morning. It suspends Ford's authority to appoint and dismiss the deputy mayor and his executive committee, which runs the budget process. Ford vowed to fight in court. I'm Phil Picardi. More ahead on the Daily Circuit.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

SPEAKER 3: Support for this program comes from the Women's Foundation of Minnesota, championing equality for women and girls through grantmaking, research and policy, providing leadership to end the sex trafficking of Minnesota girls. wfmn.org.

SPEAKER 4: Programming is supported by the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Saint Thomas, dedicated to excellence in the liberal arts for over 125 years, online at stthomas.edu/artsandsciences.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

TOM WEBER: I'm Tom Weber, and this is a Daily Circuit Special coming to you this hour from International Falls. This show and MPR's Ground Level project are looking at this one community and its future in the wake of 265 recent layoffs of high-paying jobs at the Boise Paper mill.

SPEAKER 5: Go back for a second. All right.

TERRY RANDOLPH: My name is Terry Randolph. I graduated in high school in 1965, went in the service and came back home here in year 2002 to be with family. I've been asked, is there really a place called International Falls and Frostbite Falls, as we've been known? Because I had a sweatshirt with that on one year.

And I got asked that when I was flying on an airplane. And they went, oh, wow. And they don't-- people don't understand our-- I'll say, our mentality or how we survive here, live here, not survive, live. Because, oh, it's so cold. No, it's not. It's beautiful. Come and see us.

JOHN: I'm John, and I'm retired in the Falls. I was a real estate broker. When I was going to college, the only way I could go to college is by working in the mill. And so they'd give us jobs for the summer. And it really, literally put a lot of us through school.

BILL: Like John, I was able to go to college with working in the mill and GI Bill. I graduated from college. I didn't owe any money. I had no student loans, and a big part of that was working for Boise at the time. Bill, and I live in Littlefork.

JIM ROBERTS: Oh, I'm Jim Roberts. I'm a retired. I was the former superintendent of schools for 19 years in International Falls. The biggest future still going to be wood products and tourism, of course, with Rainy Lake. But I think it's going to center on that. But we have a United Health Care and some organizations like that in town. And if you can attract those, of course, that's a plus. But you need some sort of an industrial base to really give strength to the community.

TOM WEBER: Those are some people we met at a Veterans Day breakfast at the Elks Lodge in International Falls, people who've been in International Falls for a long time and, frankly, have lived through previous layoffs in this town. Let's turn now to some of the ideas that people are talking about for how to shape the International Falls of the future. Jen Vogel, this is something you've been reporting on for a long time. What are people talking about here, about what they can do?

JENNIFER VOGEL: Well, there are a lot of ideas, and it depends on who you're talking to. But some of the bigger ideas are a plan to turn garbage into fuel, capitalizing somehow on the rail crossing here. There's a really busy rail crossing for trains on their way from Canada to Chicago.

In the past, maybe a community looking to build its jobs base would have tried to draw up a big employer from someplace or get or lure a business to town that would employ a hundred people. But now there's a smaller approach that people are thinking about, which is, what do we already do?

What can we capitalize on that we already know how to do? How do we use the talent that's already here? It's sort of an entrepreneurial approach to economic development. And we heard a lot about that at the Coffee Landing, at the coffee talk that we had. Especially one person who was really interesting was RaeAnne Conat, who started a business here on the Main Street called Swanky Sweet Pea.

RAEANNE CONAT: I moved my business here two years ago to be closer to our family. It's a wholesale bath and body manufacturing facility. We serve mostly people over the internet and nationally and internationally. So even though I have really strong family ties to Boise and everything, our main clientele is out of town.

DIANE ADAMS: My name is Diane Adams, and I'm the library director at the International Falls public library. People have talked about when the city won its water award. And isn't there somebody that would like to start a brewery, an independent brewery? Isn't there somebody-- I know.

[INTERPOSING VOICES]

[LAUGHTER]

DIANE ADAMS: But you have your hands full at the moment. So isn't there somebody else that-- and you could buy them out later. I don't care. But we don't have to be dependent on the money in town only, that in this day of the internet, you can sell anywhere.

STEPHANIE HEINLE: I'm Stephanie Heinle, and I'm the owner of the Coffee Landing Cafe. And as for getting other businesses going, it starts with pen and paper and an idea. I do it all the time. I just come up with these mock business plans.

They can go as small as you want to, as big as you want. Do you want to see a big hotel next to the Voyageurs National Park with a great big resort and restaurant in that? Maybe that's what you want to see. Start writing it up. No, I don't like that. It's going to cost too much money. And no, OK. What else? A brewery? Let's write this up.

People don't have to be stuck in their box or wondering, oh, well, the mill's shutting down. There's not going to be any work in town. There's so much to do. There's so many trails. It'd be great to be able to get your skis here for our cross country ski trails that we have, canoes. It would be great to just really have a great canoe shop here in town that you could do outfitters, called Put That On My Back Outfitting Company or something like that. I wrote a business plan for that already.

[LAUGHTER]

And so it's just getting going on the little things like that, and always be thinking of that instead of, where are we going to go? I'll tell you where we're going to go. We're going to do all of this stuff. We're going to have a brewery next door, and we're going to have this Outfitters company. And plus, we have the college and so much good stuff.

BETH PETERSON: Beth Peterson, and I give kudos to anybody that can start something. To throw all these ideas out is absolutely amazing, but there's a fear factor there. I have written up so many things. But honestly, I'm-- I would be terrified to start something.

TOM WEBER: The entrepreneurial spirit was buzzing around the back room of the Coffee Landing, where several people had gathered to talk about the possibilities for International Falls's future. But what Beth Peterson brought up is something we can probably all relate to-- fear. You might recall Beth's husband, Blake, was laid off earlier this year. For some in her situation, the stakes can be a lot higher when it comes to investing time and hard-earned money into something that might not pan out.

So how do you get past the fear? One theme that kept coming up on our trip was this-- strength through community, this kind of "never say die" mentality. You also get the sense it's more than just a small-town attitude. Way up there on the edge of the country, 100 miles from any other sizable city, people in International Falls are fiercely loyal.

JANELLE FELLER: My name is Janelle Feller, and I work for the Occupational Development Center. I'm not from here. I am from South Dakota. My husband is from South Dakota. We chose this place. I don't have family here that are related by blood, but I have found a family here in many different ways in my neighborhood.

I have sisters from other mothers, and this is my home. I'm a small town girl from a small town in South Dakota, and most small towns are the same. Everybody knows you. You get good, the bad, and the ugly. But if something goes wrong, I know that there are 20 individuals that are going to come to my rescue, not because we're related, but because we have-- because we're family.

RAEANNE CONAT: It really has been the greatest thing turns out for my business, which I started out of our home. Raeanne Conat, by the way. When you know people, everybody wants you to succeed. And everybody is just so supportive of everybody else, and it's just-- it's really helped my business to be centralized, especially with everybody pulling for you.

WARD MERRILL: My name is Ward Merrill, and it's more than just business, too. I think it's the whole quality of life in the community, what you do with education and Rainy River community college, celebrating the arts and culture, being supportive of that as well. It's often, I think, tough to draw professionals up here where there's a lack of things like shopping and cultural activities. And I think we have to build on that too to make a strong community.

JORDAN PEARSON: This is Jordan Pearson. I feel like some larger businesses, people who have made it, are really scared of competition. I know starting out, I started my company six days before Boise Cascade made their announcement to cut 300 jobs. I imagine how that felt.

[LAUGHTER]

So six days before, I'm opening up shop. And Boise makes an announcement to cut jobs. And my competitors made it very hard for me. Well, competition is good. It's good for everybody. It's good for the consumer. It's good for the community. And we should make people who are investing outside of our community who are actually taking the initiative to invest in our community-- we should support them too because it's a big investment for them. They don't want to fail, and we don't want them to fail, because we want to grow.

TOM WEBER: Jordan Pearson, the real estate agent, also expressed some of the frustration people have with the status quo. And when you factor in the 265 layoffs at the mill, the resistance to change, it's like a one-two punch. Some people are looking beyond the county line for work and life.

And that brings up another problem the town has to deal with. How do you get people to stay? And better yet, how do you attract new people? Stefan Briggs grew up in International Falls. He now teaches at Rainy River Community College.

STEFAN BRIGGS: The college does bring a lot of people in the community, a lot of young people, a lot of athletes and people coming in. But it's hard to draw students there beyond an athletic thing, unless they're not a local to come up to a community college. Most of the students that I have in my classes or I've met or I talk to and they talk about their futures and what they plan on doing, it always leads to going to a university somewhere, getting a degree.

And then they would to come back. But if it's outside of education or something like that, I mean, they really can't. You get a college degree, and you end up staying in Duluth or the cities. There's not really that professional level of jobs around here.

JANELLE FELLER: There are a lot of students, nursing students coming from other countries.

STEFAN BRIGGS: Oh, absolutely.

JANELLE FELLER: And I wish that we could figure out a way to be more inclusive, to get them to not only go to school here, but to stay here. It would make us-- it would provide us with a new blood, new ideas, new way of thinking, make us more diverse and world aware.

JORDAN PEARSON: It's amazing to me that some people still use the N word. You travel to different areas. You don't hear as many racial slurs. I mean, it's around. But I think that goes with being open-minded and being more accepting of other cultures.

STEFAN BRIGGS: Open-mindedness is something that needs to be a cultural shift here. It needs to happen within the community first. A lot of those students who I've become really good friends with-- they feel the difference from campus to off campus.

Anyone who lives in the dorms or anyone who's not from around here, I mean, that's their common. Their commonality is that they're not from here. And then when they, say, go to-- leave campus, go to Kmart or County Market or whatever, they feel that separation from the community. And it's obvious. It's obvious.

I mean, we've talked about the-- how tight-knit the community is of the people that are here. But to open that up is what needs to happen because those-- a lot of them, a lot of students-- they like it up here, but they feel so distant from the actual community themselves. They don't want to stay.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

TOM WEBER: This is the Daily Circuit. I'm Tom Weber. We're in International Falls this hour with MPR's Ground Level Project. We're looking at this town and the conversations being had about this town's future in the wake of 265 recent layoffs at the paper mill.

As cold as it is outside, there are places inside the Boise mill where it's downright tropical, as miles of paper weave through a continuous loop until finally just towering rolls of paper that measure in the tons are wound. These are not the sheets of paper you put in a printer yet, although this paper is cut up into those sheets here as well.

There is something, though, in International Falls that's been around even longer than the mill. It's quieter, and it could play an even larger role in this area's future. What if the same trees that made a paper mill such a good business idea were more and more the trees that paint a scenic landscape that bring more tourists here, more tourist dollars, and a bolstered tourism industry?

JOE MERSHON: I think tourism plays the most important immediate role in stabilizing our local economy. The tourism industry is and has been for a considerable period of time the second largest industry in our area. It's also one that has never truly been heavily promoted. It's always been here, and it very likely always will be here.

The question is, if we can put some marketing effort into the business, which already has the infrastructure, we don't need to build any more roads or bridges. There's hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of hotel rooms, cabins, beds and breakfasts, high-end lodges in the area that run an annualized occupancy right now of something a little shy of 50%. So if we can solve that other 50%, we can more than make up for what we've lost in the wood products industry.

TOM WEBER: That's Joe Mershon. He's president of Destination Voyageurs National Park. This is an all-volunteer group that has the sole goal of doing more to get the word out about Voyageurs National park, which is Minnesota's only National Park. And it's just to the east of I-Falls. Now, reporter Jen Vogel, we spoke to Mike Ward. He's the superintendent of this park.

JENNIFER VOGEL: That's right, and he talked about how underutilized this park is. When it was established in the 1970s, it was controversial. And there was some pushback from some of the gateway communities, including International Falls.

And it's taken a while to mend those feelings to make people feel better about the park and to embrace it. But since the layoffs at the mill, I think people are looking at it, taking a harder look at it and thinking, how can we capitalize on this? How can we make jobs around this? Originally, when the park was established, it was estimated that it would have maybe a million visitors per year. But so far, it's only drawn about 250,000.

MIKE WARD: Some park's actually are in the situation where they feel like they're loved to death. Voyageurs is nowhere near that right now. Part of that is marketing also. And part of it is the early years where we weren't getting along with the community. So the story that was going out to the public who might want to visit were different. The park was saying one thing, and the local resorts and the communities were saying another. So--

TOM WEBER: There's quite a history here on how this park came to be and things like, this place was forced upon us. And it was hard in those first 40 years ago. There have been a lot of people who say it's gotten better. There's been a thaw.

MIKE WARD: I think so, yeah.

TOM WEBER: What still needs to be done, I guess, to get that relationship between the park and the city just at its most pristine?

MIKE WARD: Well, you know, my experience tells me that it takes a very long time. So Yellowstone actually celebrated a hundred years a few years back. And large issues that affect a lot of people are still being argued there and trying to be solved. So we always have to have those in order to make sure that we're hearing everybody, in order to make sure the decisions are being made in the right way. We're always going to have tough discussions.

I would hope at this point that what's going on in AI falls right now is a good stimulator for making sure that we all are at least finding the things that we agree on and that we can improve our communities with and focus on those and get them moving. So I think that while there-- it's going to take several generations for some people that were hurt by the government the way that we actually came in here.

I think that some people have already healed to the point where they're OK now. Others are going to be angry for more generations, and it just depends on the experience that they had with the government when the park was actually created.

TOM WEBER: And we're talking about things like taking private land and--

MIKE WARD: Yeah, exactly. Exactly, yeah.

TOM WEBER: You know, Voyageurs-- and I don't know if there's a superlative here. But if not, the only one of these only parks where the only way to really get around it is in a boat.

MIKE WARD: Water, yeah.

TOM WEBER: There's so many islands, and it's just these big lakes. And that's limiting.

MIKE WARD: It is.

TOM WEBER: I'm a guy. I'd love to come camping here, but I don't own a boat.

MIKE WARD: Yeah. And I think one of the things-- a few of the things that we're working on, that one is 2008, we got a 49-passenger tour boat that normally you would see out in the water there but we put away for the winter.

TOM WEBER: Yeah.

MIKE WARD: So when folks do come and they haven't brought a boat with them, they have regularly scheduled tours that they can use that. And we also lease it in the evenings for those folks or groups that want to go out and visit the park and have-- maybe hold an event that they can enjoy with the background of the park on the boat. So that's one way.

The other way is that I'm hoping that the reservation system that we actually are beginning to work on will create a little bit more comfort in the first-time users of the park in the sense that we were getting a lot of people to come up here on Friday. They'd get in their boat and start looking for a campsite and driving all over the place.

TOM WEBER: They're all taken.

MIKE WARD: They're all taken. The close ones are taken because it's Friday evening. And after you've driven five hours or three hours up here and you get in your boat and you start looking around and you can't find a campsite, then we get a lot of frustrated customers. So we're hoping that's going to resolve that issue anyway.

TOM WEBER: But is internet-- with the plant losing so many jobs, and there's this economic analysis I read out of the EU that said each of those jobs paid on average, what, $90,000-- if you boost the tourism here in this part of the state, those jobs aren't going to pay $90,000 a year.

MIKE WARD: No. I wouldn't even know what those jobs would pay. But I do know that we can at least double what we're doing right now. And it should be easy through marketing and raising awareness about what the park does have to offer.

And that's going to help the situation. I don't think we're going to be able to solve the entire issue. But I think right now, this community needs to diversify as much as they can. And we are going to work as hard as we can to be part of that diversification.

TOM WEBER: Do you foresee an I-Fall someday mirroring-- and I don't want to say it should be, but in some ways mirroring a town like Ely, which is lined with outfitters, for example? You know you're in a Boundary Waters town when you're in Ely because every third place is some kind of an outfitter. And I can get in-- it's not the same here.

MIKE WARD: Yeah, no, it isn't the same here. And I do hope to see an increase in that. And those would be some of the jobs that we're talking about, and I think that's some of the economy that we're talking about. I think there's a lot of folks that are still skeptical of that. But anytime you have a National Park in your backyard, there's opportunities there.

Do we want to be like Ely? Not necessarily. Would we like to grow to the point where there are more Outfitters or more companies that are actually providing part of the experience that the park is? Absolutely.

TOM WEBER: Again, since it's only accessible by boat, I haven't seen much of Voyageurs. What's your favorite part?

MIKE WARD: I have a lot of favorite parts, to be honest with you. Kettle Falls, the historic hotel up at the far end of the park that you can only get to by boat is a wonderful, wonderful place to visit and spend the night and enjoy.

The night sky in the park-- so when you're out in a campsite and you look up at the sky in the middle of the night and you're far enough out from the city lights-- just absolutely incredible. I've never seen anything like it. It's just one of those experiences that you don't get anywhere else. That's just incredible.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

TOM WEBER: That's Mike Ward, the superintendent of Voyageurs National Park, talking about tourism's role, maybe a larger role for the future here in International Falls. You're listening to The Daily Circuit. I'm Tom Weber. We're here with reporter Jen Vogel. We're back on 3rd Street here, main street in downtown I-Falls.

Jen, we've met people here who really are going to leave, for sure. We had a server in the restaurant the other night. She said there's just nothing for her here, so she's going to go to Colorado. We've met other people who are absolutely set on making this their future. The coffee shop owner is taking some night classes. She's going to try to bolster her business.

But it's really interesting, Jen. A lot of people just aren't sure. I get this sense that the real impact of these layoffs at the mill might not be felt and really aren't yet felt here, what, six weeks removed from those layoffs?

JENNIFER VOGEL: Yeah, we talked with a lot of people here who feel like there are severance packages. There's unemployment, which is keeping people going for now. There's the holidays coming up. Right now is deer hunting season, which is a really, really big deal up here.

So there's a real feeling that a lot of people are putting off those hard decisions until January or later and that the impacts on this city, whether people stay or go, whether they go elsewhere to find jobs. What that's going to mean for this place we might not know until after the new year.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

JANELLE FELLER: We are a hardy people. We are strong, tough and stubborn. That's the only reason that we're living here. And that's why your parents moved here. Your grandparents moved here is because we are a stubborn lot. And I think that for all of those reasons, we're going to make it.

TOM WEBER: You've been listening to a Daily Circuit Special here from International Falls this hour. I'm Tom Weber, along with producer Marc Sanchez. We're here with MPR's Ground Level Project as well. Reporter Jen Vogel and editor Dave Peters. Derek Montgomery is our photographer. You can see a lot of photos and all the reporting we've done from International Falls, both at the Ground Level Blog and on the Daily Circuit page at mprnews.org.