FAIRMONT — By now people in Fairmont may have heard of Alex Young-Williams. Fresh out of college, Young-Williams is part of a group looking to help younger people get back to their home communities and help them thrive.

Brought in by Project 1590, Young-Williams has had conversations with several people in Fairmont. After identifying what he believes to be both positive and negative influences toward Fairmont’s future growth, he has compiled his findings and is ready to share his thoughts. Noting that he is not actually working for any particular organization in Fairmont, Young-Williams shares how he came to the area and what he hopes to accomplish.

“I grew up on the East Coast but I came over Macalester College in St. Paul for my undergrad,” he said. “I just graduated this past may, and I was just looking for the next step to take for my career. I felt that I as I was putting down roots in Minnesota, I wanted to stay in the area.

“So I was contacted by my current executive director in the Lead For Minnesota Fellowship program. The idea of the program is to attract young people back to their home towns or their home state-communities, in my case, and work on what those communities have determined to be their biggest challenges.

“So I’m here because some people caught wind of the Fellowship and applied to host a fellow, and I ended up being selected for this particular position. I chose the Fellowship because I felt like it spoke to a lot of key issues in the growing urban-rural divide going on in this country, and I believe I can make a difference.”

When it comes to his findings about Fairmont, Young-Williams states that he sees a lot of potential for the city’s future.

“Every fellow is required to sit down and have intentional one-on-one conversations with various stake-holders in the community. My focus has been downtown revitalization, so I’ve spoken to a lot of business owners downtown. But I’ve also spoken to folks in City Hall, some of the city council members, various non-profit groups and I work out of the officer at CER.

“That being said, I think Fairmont has a lot of really great things going for it. The natural beauty of the lakes is a positive thing. It’s already being well-utilized, but it could be utilized even more to bring in more investment and tourism. The downtown area has a lot of potential, and with the downtown revitalization process that’s being led by the city I think the overall message I want to send is that there are many positive things going for Fairmont, while understanding what unique challenges and road blocks Fairmont is facing.”

When asked what he’s seen as far as those challenges, Young-Williams stated that he simply wanted to reiterate that he feels that there are a lot of possibilities for positive improvement. He then shifted his focus to future projects.

“There are a couple of projects that I’m picking up on, and that includes a housing project I want to do with a professor from the University of Minnesota. We want to put up an affordable senior housing complex, and our tentative location for that is at Downtown and Fourth Street.

“I’m also interested in working more with the arts and the cultural side of things. I think there’s a lot of folks with a lot of good ideas for making Fairmont a place where people would want to come downtown for artistic events and that kind of thing.”

When asked if he would personally consider staying in Fairmont if his envisioned improvements gain traction, Young-Williams noted that he has mixed feelings.

“I’m here, so obviously I think the answer is yes. But it was for a job, and I don’t know what other thing would inspire me to look around down here. To be honest, I spent four years in the cities, but never in Fairmont.

“I think, as a young person, I do have a certain bias toward wanting to see certain things. I’ll just say that there seems to be a lack of communication and an overall lack of trust between different groups of people. The work is to try and reconcile how different people want the city to move forward, but I want to work on a positive direction and find positive solutions.”