JANESVILLE — Janesville consultant and community leader Oakleigh Ryan dove deep into city history as she spoke in Beloit on Wednesday about how Janesville has grown and changed over nearly two centuries.
Ryan spoke Wednesday at the 16th annual Miller Upton Forum at Beloit College, explaining the ideas of David Audretsch, the chosen scholar for the forum. She used Janesville as the example of why people are the driving force behind building a lasting community.
Ryan said she grew up an Army brat and moving frequently meant she was introduced to many different places and communities.
When she read Audretsch’s book “A Place for Entrepreneurship or Entrepreneurship for a Place?” she said she began thinking about the policy of the place and who or what drives it.
Breaking the city’s history into three different eras, she identified what drove Janesville at each time, starting with 1854 to 1918.
In that era, planners laid out the city around the Rock River. The resources were the river, the railroad and people who started up companies like Parker Pen, The 69 and Gray Brewing Company, Ryan said.
She characterized 1919-1988 as the “American dream” era when Janesville chose to have a city manager instead of a mayor and passed its first spending referendum. In this era, she said the city worked to grow but not be a boom town, according to a brochure from 1945 that Ryan referenced.
She characterized 1989-2008 as an era of planning for disruption, at a time when major industry like General Motors drove the city.
“We were just dominated by GM,” she said. “That’s the thing, if you get stuck on one thing, when it’s gone, what do you do?”
After the General Motors plant closed in 2009, a new era began. It included development of the Marshall Apartments and the Janesville Performing Arts Center and a focus on building community groups and community identity.
At the end of the day, though, the most important key for a city to thrive is its human element, she said.
“The most powerful weapon in the world is the human soul on fire,” Ryan said, quoting Ferdinand Koch, a French General in World War II. “I believe that’s the essence that will drive placemaking. When we embrace that, and when we know that with that, the other things really can’t click,” that will move a city forward.
