This small city is ahead of the digital curve

This small city is ahead of the digital curve

Winona is working to ensure that it won't be left behind

"Only once or twice in your life do you come across a place like this." -- Zebulon Pike

This is a story about one Minnesota town that's preparing for the digital future. It's about a community that's a little too far from the interstate highway, but it's not about to miss out on the next infrastructure.

It's a story that flips the conventional wisdom about rural America on its head. Communities like this are not fated to watch their young people and their vitality inexorably drawn to the big cities. Far from it.

This new information infrastructure, through which future commerce will flow, may reverse the migration in the coming decades and make these communities very attractive places to live.

This story focuses on a town that's very similar to many small cities and towns throughout rural Minnesota. But this place, Winona, is one of the first to grasp the emerging opportunity, to work to build a telecommunications infrastructure -- and a mindset -- for the 21st century.

To get to Winona from the Twin Cities, take Hwy. 61 south out of St. Paul -- a beautiful drive, whatever the season. Once past Red Wing, the road follows the wide, open valley of the Mississippi River, the region's first infrastructure. The river was the conduit for American Indians, explorers, trappers and pioneers. In the 18th century, it was the only way to move people, products and information.

Along the river runs the region's second infrastructure, this one manmade. The railroad tracks became the vital link between towns and cities in the 19th century and determined which ones grew and which died out.

You drive on the next fundamental infrastructure: roads. This century, roads superseded the other two and became the all-important infrastructure -- until, perhaps, today.

Hwy. 61 takes you right into Winona, population 25,000. It's a classic middle-American town nestled under the bluffs on the flats by the river. It's existence is intimately bound up with all three infrastructures: river, rails and roads.

Settlers found the site ideal, both in practical terms and for its beauty -- renowned by the likes of explorer Zebulon Pike. Trappers, loggers and farmers used it as a hub.

The town then emerged as a rail terminus for traffic between Chicago and the plains. Commerce collected around the node and local companies even became involved in building boxcars.

Roads were a mixed bag. Winona's state legislators had the clout to build a fast four-lane highway running through their town, but it petered out into a more tortuous two-lane road less than half the distance to the Twin Cities.

The real blow was Interstate Hwy. 90, built 3 1/2 miles south of town. The superhighway ran straight through Winona's Wisconsin rival, La Crosse, and linked with Rochester to the west.

Winona was stranded -- too far off the track for cross-country travelers and inconvenient for many businesses.

Envisioning a wired Winona

Today some very determined people are out to ensure that Winona isn't bypassed again. They're working to see that their town will be one of the first wired to the so-called information superhighway -- the infrastructure that may supersede the road.

Enter Bob Kierlin, the nuts and bolts guy -- literally -- as president of Fastenal, a booming company that sells fasteners of all sorts through its more than 300 stores nationwide. The company has done so well that Kierlin and his four cofounders channeled some of the proceeds into what they call the Hiawatha Foundation, devoted to education.

Kierlin and three of the others had graduated from Winona Cotter, a Catholic high school. They began to buy the school computers and other state-of-the-art digital technologies to prepare Cotter's students for the future and make sure they would be as familiar with these tools as kids anywhere.

Kierlin's the visionary. He wanted these kids to have access to the best teachers, the most current information, the same educational opportunities as any city kids. Kierlin eventually realized that the answer lay in wiring the school with fiber-optic cable -- the backbone of the high-capacity, interactive information infrastructure of the next century. The cable would allow video conferencing with experts and the transfer of huge amounts of data.

Then Kierlin started thinking through the implications of what these new technologies would do to education and business over time. Within 10 to 20 years, students will probably be learning through individualized instruction, often right out of the home. A firm in Winona will be able to be as plugged into the global economy as one in Minneapolis, or even Los Angeles. And with rising interest in the quality of life, people will want to move out of congested cities to places like Winona, nestled in those beautiful river bluffs.

Next came the can-do guys, Bud Baechler, a local businessman in marketing, and Gary Evans, a former newspaperman and now a vice president of Winona State University. The two are Winona to the core. Baechler's great-grandfather immigrated from Switzerland and settled just across the river 100 years ago. Baechler and Evans shared the same back-yard fence for 18 years.

With a nudge from Kierlin two years ago, and with $600,000 in seed money from his Hiawatha Foundation, the two became the project managers of Luminet, dedicated to wiring Winona with fiber-optic connections.

Baechler and Evans drew off all their Winona connections to try to turn the project into one of the premier telecommunications initiatives in the country. They contacted another Winona native, now a top Sprint executive, and finagled a deal for that company to be the network's long-distance carrier. In time, U S West Communications joined to design and construct the actual infrastructure.

'Luminet' is the link

In phase one, completed in May, the community built a fiber-optic network between eight key institutions, from colleges and secondary schools to the hospital and City Hall. It has set up working groups creating applications in telemedicine, economic development and distance learning. It's beginning to provide Internet access for local residents with just a local phone call.

That's where Tony Van Hoof comes in. Van Hoof grew up in Winona, went to school at Cotter and left to go to college at Notre Dame to study multimedia production.

Like many young people from Winona, Van Hoof seemed destined to drift off to jobs and a career in the big city. But three years ago, he was wooed back to his alma mater for an opportunity he couldn't resist. Cotter was investing millions in new technologies, wiring every room on campus, save the toilets and closets. And it was asking Van Hoof to create a unique learning environment.

At 27, he is director of Vanguard Technologies Group, a nonprofit company under Cotter's umbrella, formed to develop interactive educational software. Van Hoof focuses on content. He doesn't worry about the infrastructure or technologies -- they're proceeding nicely. He tries to develop software to take full advantage of the system's potential.

His other job is to retrain people in how to use the new tools. One of his first tasks was a crash course on multimedia computers for Cotter faculty members, including many of the teachers who once taught him.

Phase two of Luminet involves getting local businesses to tap into the fiber network that now links the major institutions. Eventually the founders want the whole town wired. That means the gospel of the Luminet must become the creed of the small businessperson and the homeowner.

And that means Kierlin, the visionary, must help spread the word in various public meetings, like a lunch at the Rotary Club late last year. Kierlin made his pitch that these new-fangled technologies and this fiber-optic infrastructure are the future. That the town's young people will reap the benefits. That local business will compete and grow. And that Winona will thrive.

His talk met with polite applause and a few awkward questions. Then the gathered members, like Rotary Club members across middle America, ended the meeting with the pledge: "Is it the truth? Is it fair to all concerned? Will it build good will and better friendships? Will it be beneficial to all concerned?"

Winona will be one of the first spots in Minnesota to learn how those questions will be answered.