Hastings —  In 2013, the city had 25,003 people, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. A decade later, it grew by just two — standing at 25,005 in 2023. 

But that doesn’t mean the city itself has been stagnant. Long defined by entrepreneurship — famously, Kool-Aid was invented here — Hastings continues to host industries like agriculture and plastics manufacturing. It’s also fertile ground for small businesses ranging from a shop turning sheep’s wool into fertilizer to an African immigrant’s coffee company.

A new co-working and business incubator space hopes to encourage more of those efforts, and, in turn, keep people in Hastings. Almost a decade in the making, the $2.5 million Schnase 1906 District opened July 1. The space is part of a local economic development boom that has seen a rush of new housing projects and downtown revitalization.

“People move predominantly for three different reasons … job opportunities, housing and family, and usually where two of those things exist, then you can attract or retain a person,” said Dave Rippe, a local real estate developer, board member of Schnase 1906 and former director of the Nebraska Department of Economic Development. 

“What we hear from people is that the job opportunities that they want might not exist in rural communities,” he said. Instead, “how can (Schnase 1906) be a place that can help them launch their own opportunities?”

Talk, then time for doing

For decades, Hastings leaders talked about making resources for entrepreneurship more accessible. Concrete ideas started to emerge in the mid-2010s. At the time, Maggie Esch was working at the Hastings Economic Development Corporation and brainstorming a programming-forward approach, mainly for high school and college students.

As the COVID-19 pandemic hit in 2020, its disruption also gave time to rethink. “When we saw businesses have to close … we thought there was a great opportunity here to help people get their business started and off the ground,” Esch said. The new focus was a dedicated entrepreneurship space geared toward all of the community, not just students.

“I remember when the Hastings Community Foundation was asked to join a meeting of maybe six, eight people that were community leaders, business (leaders),” said Dan Peters, executive director of the foundation. “They said, ‘It's time. We are going to figure out how to do this.’”

Ideas ranged from being hosted by Hastings College or the local campus of Central Community College to being franchised by an existing co-working company. An independent nonprofit based in downtown Hastings won out.

“It came back to, we want to be in the heart of our community,” Esch said. “We need everything to be under one roof, and we want to be affordable, attainable (and) realistic for people who are just getting off the ground.”

The project’s fundraising campaign was a joint effort with the Hastings Community Foundation, which was also in need of new central offices. “We landed on a $2.5 million project,” Peters said. “We knew it could not go one penny over.”

Originally, the plan was to raise north of $1 million from Omaha foundations and leftover federal pandemic funds. Just $200,000 was raised from those sources. Instead, most of the fundraising came from local residents and businesses in Adams County.

One of the project’s early backers was the family of Larry Schnase, a Hastings entrepreneur and plastics manufacturer. His name — combined with the fact that, in 1906, the downtown building hosting the new space had burned down in a fire and been rebuilt — became the project’s moniker: The Schnase 1906 District, signaling a new start for entrepreneurship efforts here.

Just the start

The co-working and incubator space has 6,422 square feet of brightly lit booths, offices and meeting space across two floors, with boardrooms and bathrooms shared with the adjacent office of the Hastings Community Foundation. There also is a podcast and media room. It’s an impressive build — and a large place to fill up.

Esch, now a Hastings City Council member and president of the Schnase 1906 board, knows that will take time. “I don't think there's an end-all-be-all to how we're going to fill this space,” she said.

Co-working costs $199 a month, with private offices available at $499 a month. Esch hopes that as businesses grow, they will also grow out of Schnase 1906 and help give back to the community by renting local market-rate office space. 

Another draw for people: A partnership with Central Community College’s Entrepreneurship Center. The Hastings director, Scott Snell, has a permanent office at Schnase 1906 to help guide entrepreneurs.

“Oftentimes, I'll sit right here (at the entry), and people will come in, and we'll just engage and talk,” Snell said. “It's been a wonderful experience. I'm working right now with a 20-year-old, all the way up to a 66-year-old … helping them through (business planning), getting them the resources they need.”

Then there are the planned workshops and other community events that Schnase 1906 will host to bring people in. But there’s no immediate need to worry about sustainability from tenant income. Instead, there’s a multiyear runway of fundraised operating commitments.

Rippe, the local developer, thinks there are enough entrepreneurs in Hastings to fill Schnase 1906. “I'm very thankful there's not a pressure to have this thing full on day one, because that's when ultimately you compromise your mission,” he said.

Rippe is also the director of the Scott Scholars program at Hastings College, and plans to hold meetings for students at Schnase 1906. Several students are already signed on to intern here. Others, like sophomore Caden Block, want to use the space for their own entrepreneurship.

Block has a marketing business, working with local shops and real estate agents, that he operates largely out of his dorm room. His family also owns Back Alley Bakery, right across the street.

“Me and my mom have talked about having a centralized office (at Schnase 1906) that we can both work at,” Block said. “She can get away from the distractions of a restaurant setting to get some work done, and I can come here to have more of a professional, centralized spot that I can run my business out of.”

With housing, growing a pipeline 

Schnase 1906 is part of an overall economic development effort in Hastings, with much of that centered on housing. By the mid-2010s, housing projects were few and far between, with practically none focused on multifamily builds or affordable places for young adults.

“Knowing that we really do attract a lot of young people that come here for college, we knew that if we wanted to retain and even recruit (our) workforce, we needed to have a better variety of housing options,” said Shannon Landauer, executive director of the Hastings Economic Development Corporation.

The HEDC has been a central force for housing, thanks to Nebraska’s Rural Workforce Housing Fund. Created in 2017, the fund gives matching grants to boost housing. With three successful applications, combined with local dollars from other stakeholders, HEDC now has a roughly $5 million revolving loan fund to spend on projects. Hastings also uses tax increment financing to support new builds.

The rapid pace of investment is noticeable. “In the past few months, housing has gotten exponentially better here,” said Lily Teeple, a recent graduate of Hastings College. Teeple recalled trying — and struggling — to find an apartment earlier this year. Now, she’s happily based in downtown.

That improvement is also a boon to the thousands of people who live in Grand Island and commute to Hastings for work — a roughly 40-minute drive each way. Some of Teeple’s co-workers were in that group. But after seeing new housing options, the co-workers started moving to Hastings.

“It's great to see them finally be like, ‘Oh, I don't have to wake up at 6 a.m. to get to work at 7:30,’” Teeple said. “It's great to have them here. They're spending their money here, and they're investing in Hastings, and that's a great thing to see as well.”

More people, plus more support for entrepreneurship, means a better chance for Hastings to thrive — without worrying about population stagnancy or brain drain. “You just never know who might walk into Schnase District with an idea … and turn that into one of the next anchor companies of our community,” Landauer said.

Silicon Prairie News is the leading independent, nonprofit newsroom focused on covering stories about innovation and entrepreneurship in Nebraska.