Another Fine Line

I’m not sure how many people have been following the situation in Aurora, New York over the past six years, but I found the story from the Associate Press via Yahoo News to be most interesting – and an illustration of how hard it can be to find the line, sometimes. Since I work on the non-profit side sometimes, and philanthropy is most definitely a business function, I thought it might be interesting to take a closer look at this issue. Especially since it has ramifications far beyond the events in Aurora…

Up until about six years ago, the story goes, Aurora, New York was just a small college town in decline. A community of about 700 residents, Aurora’s largest employers were Wells College (founded by Henry Wells of Wells Fargo and American Express fame), which was having trouble attracting students, and MacKenzie-Childs Ltd., a pottery and home furnishings center that was actually in bankruptcy, threatening to take 240 jobs with it. Into this troubled community came Pleasant Thiele Rowland, the founder of the American Girl doll company and a Wells College graduate. Ms. Rowland told the townspeople that she had always loved Aurora, and was going to put up the money to restore the town to its 19th Century glory, replacing worn-out old businesses with upscale versions, restoring the historic older buildings, buying the MacKenzie-Childs center out of receivership, and refurbishing the college.

This she proceeded to do, taking no profit at all from any part of the project. Since there is no public money involved, no one really knows how much was spent on this project, but we know that Ms. Rowland sold the doll company to Mattel for roughly $700 million, so clearly she had the finds to spend. Sprucing up the college generated no controversy; wealthy donors do this all the time, and while the faculty grumbled about money being spent on decorating instead of instruction, no one really took umbrage until she began working on the town itself. Some of the townspeople felt that their “patron” was trying to make over their town into some phony, idealized vision of itself that would replace its actual historic buildings and artifacts. Others believed that the makeover and the financial support were vital to restoring the town’s frayed economy. There were, perhaps inevitably, lawsuits and counter-suits; placards and bumper stickers; arguments and bad feelings on both sides.

My question is this: If someone is willing to put up their own money to restore a community, and is willing to purchase buildings, businesses, and real estate at fair market value to do so, does the community have an ethical responsibility to permit this? Or do they have a responsibility to respect the wishes of the residents who want the town to stay the way it was? Clearly, this is a situation where compromise will be difficult, as the anti-renovation side wants nothing to change, and the pro-renovation side wants to give the town’s new benefactor a free hand to change anything she wants to – on the grounds that the town was dying before, and any change has to be for the better.

All across the United States (and probably many other places in the world) there are other small communities that will not be fortunate enough to be offered such a choice – small towns where the primary employer has been forced to shut down, most of the families have drifted away, and only a handful of service businesses (gas stations, taverns and the like) remain to live off of the occasional out-of-town traffic. Any of these communities would trade places with Aurora in a heartbeat – and would probably tell the people in Aurora that compared to watching your community turn into a ghost town, being remade in some faux 19th Century splendor is nothing to complain about.

I just wonder how they would feel about things if their town was the one being turned into a giant dollhouse…