Family ties pay off for Hebron
August 19, 2003
BY FREDERIC SMITH, for the Tribune
Happy Hebron. The westernmost city in Morton County is well-known for its Hebron Brick Co., an exemplar of the so-called "old economy" of manufacturing. Next month, it will welcome an Information Age entry, Grizella Corp., which creates software for the trucking industry that matches loads and trucks online.
This is the kind of high-end new business for which North Dakota is supposed to be qualified by virtue of distance-erasing telecommunications. We've seen little enough of it, though, especially in the smaller cities. That a business function can be performed anywhere is no guarantee that it will be.
North Dakota has traditionally been "too far from the markets." We are even further, in psychological miles, from the creative types who develop and work at companies such as Grizella. To be blunt, a lot of these people would regard a move to North Dakota — or to any other state lacking either big cities or mountains "e; as cultural or spiritual suicide.
But what if the founders are North Dakotans? Some of these you probably couldn't drag here, either. Others, like Grizella's Mark Draeb and his brother, Jon, have been waiting for an opportunity for 20 years. That opportunity arose when it was time to expand their Denver company, and they decided their home town would do as well as any.
"I think it's a great place to live," Mark Draeb said. "I had a great childhood here." More, he made the sale to his employees, whom he brought to town for the annual company party.
Sometimes, a town has to be lucky as well as good. A few years ago, the city of New Salem won a hot competition for a modern medical-waste incinerator, which would have given New Salem an anchor-strength employer. Then the state extended its schedule for enforcement of rules against old-style burning, and the incinerator's customers went up the chimney.
So, Hebron is lucky in having a couple of successful native sons who would rather come home than go skiing, and are bringing jobs. All of those jobs will probably not be filled with local talent, and that's all right, too. New blood can invigorate families — and towns.
Grizella figures to be important to Hebron in more ways than one.