JA, community celebrate new, vibrant Michael Duffy JA BizTown

Junior Achievement of the Heartland threw open the doors on Tuesday, Sept. 17, to its new, vibrant, reimagined Michael Duffy JA BizTown. Supporters also celebrated the man for whom the new learning center is named and all who made the project possible. The new JA BizTown and Jim Victor Finance Park make up the new […]

Junior Achievement of the Heartland threw open the doors on Tuesday, Sept. 17, to its new, vibrant, reimagined Michael Duffy JA BizTown. Supporters also celebrated the man for whom the new learning center is named and all who made the project possible. The new JA BizTown and Jim Victor Finance Park make up the new area JA Inspiration Center. It's located inside the Vibrant Credit Union Headquarters just off John Deere Road in Moline. The colorful new location replaces JA’s former BizTown in downtown Davenport. The move was five years in the making, Dougal Nelson, president & CEO of Junior Achievement of the Heartland, told the QCBJ. Clearly it was worth the wait.

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“It exceeded my expectations,” he said. “What is really amazing is how much bigger it looks than when it was empty.” He added, “We were one of the first Junior Achievements in the country to pilot this program. So 25 years later, it’s not your father’s JA.” The new location also opened to rave reviews from business and community leaders, donors and educators at the open house that also honored the late Michael Duffy, the longtime JA supporter, for whom the BizTown is now named.  Mr. Duffy, under whose leadership the family-owned Per Mar Security and Research Group grew to encompass six states, died Friday, Jan. 21, 2022, of pneumonia following COVID-19.  “Michael believed that if he took care of employees, they would take care of customers and results would follow,” a prominent memorial written on a wall just inside the entrance reads. “I think our values really align with Mike’s values,” Mr. Nelson told the QCBJ. “He believed in community. He believed in hard work and the value that came with that so it was a natural fit for us.”

Duffys honor dad

Mr. Duffy’s son, Brian Duffy, the current president of PerMar Security, Davenport, and a member of the JA’s governing board, and Mr. Duffy’s daughter, Bridget Murphy, the principal at Davenport’s Assumption High School and a JA educator, agreed. “It’s amazing the work that has been done to get it to this point,” the younger Mr. Duffy told the QCBJ. “It was hard to picture it last time I was here and now it's awesome.” “This is so big and so open I think it is something that kids will be so much more excited to remember,” he said. “I still meet kids who remember when they went to Biztown,” he said, adding the new location “will just make that more likely.” To laughter from the crowd, Brian Duffy said, “Financial Literacy is something that my father showed was important to him by getting me a copy of ‘Rich Dad, Poor Dad’ on my 10th birthday.” It set a pattern throughout Brian Duffy’s lifetime in which his dad sent him articles about personal financing and saving.  “We were expected to support ourselves and find work that is fulfilling,” Brian Duffy said of his family. The Duffy kids learned “There is dignity in any job well done and both of my parents showed that with the way they treated people up and down our company as well as out and about in the community.” His sister, Bridget Murphy, said, “I grew up in a business-oriented household. My parents Mike and Linda Duffy did everything they could to teach us about real life skills growing up. In our household among other values we were taught to think critically, communicate with others, budget, have a vision, and work. “ She added “These skills embody much of what the day-to-day operations of any business entail.” And they are the focus of JA whose move to these new state-of-the-art digs was a long time coming. 

Five years in the making

JA of the Heartland was one of the first in the country to pilot JA Exchange City 25 years ago in Davenport. The former facility, at 116 W. Second St., Davenport, later became JA Biztown. “That facility served us very well over the years,” Mr. Nelson said. “But after 25 years the building was tired.” Its lease also was up. That's why five years ago, JA began looking for a new home. About three years ago the board learned that Vibrant was buying the former Sam’s Club for its new headquarters and might have space for what would later become the new JA Inspiration Center. “We started talking to them and they said ‘we have 13,000 square feet that we will give you for a dollar a year’ and that includes the utilities, the maintenance, the parking, the security, everything that comes with owning a building,” Mr. Nelson told the QCBJ. The renovations to JA’s section of the former big box store were completed by Davenport-based Russell.  Why make such a significant investment? “Our mission at Vibrant is to ‘Be the good’ and so we’re very selective on who we like to partner with and who also has that mission with us,” Amy Henderson, Vibrant Credit Union’s chief lending officer, said Tuesday. “Partnering with an organization like Junior Achievement who invests in our youth and our future is a perfect match for Vibrant so thank you for that opportunity.” While Vibrant’s donation made it possible, it was the generous community that made the renovation of that space happen by donating to the JA’s $3.25 million fundraising campaign. “We've hit that goal,” Mr. Nelson said. “But I will add that we still have wants. We built this on a shoestring budget. It looks great. It’s got everything we need today but I don’t know if it's got everything that we need for tomorrow.” (To give, go to heartland.ja.org and press the donate button.)

Area JA pioneering

Until that next thing comes, JA of the Heartland will continue to lead. “Our success has led almost 50 Junior Achievement areas across the country to build experiential learning facilities like this one,” the JA president and CEO told the crowd while thanking donors, staff and educators for making it happen. “Helping our young people find their pathways to success is on all of us in this room today,” Mr. Nelson added. “The magic rests with people like you who help our children see the linkage between what they learn in school and see how it applies in their life.” He called the Inspiration Center “a state-of-the-art learning facility designed to inspire and empower young minds as they prepare to embark on their professional journeys.” That “vital place of learning and empowerment" will serve more than 8,000 fourth through ninth graders in two years. They will learn how to navigate a job and life. “Can you imagine a fifth grader coming into this building, and taking out a business loan and having to pay it back,” Mr. Nelson said. “It’s incredible.”  The Inspiration Center also is the only facility in the region where kids get to experience the roles and responsibilities of adulthood,” he said. “We hear stories from kids who go to BizTown, then they go home and they tell their parents, ‘Now I know why you're so tired when you get home.’” The new immersive location will make that experience even better at the Michael Duffy JA BizTown which has 15 businesses, and in the nearby Jim Victor Finance Park that  boasts 14 more. The center also includes a Jersey Mike’s restaurant.

‘A city in itself’

“Essentially BizTown is a city in itself,” Mr. Nelson said. It has an elected mayor to run the city and it includes a number of businesses. Every business has a student CEO, a CFO, a chief marketing officer, some have sales associates and other workers appropriate to the business. When students are on break, they also become consumers, he said. “They earn a paycheck while they're at BizTown so they spend their money and they become consumers,” he said. And when not on break, they’re selling goods and services to the other students. In addition to learning to run businesses, for the first time a philanthropy element has been added to BizTown courtesy of a partnership with the Moline Regional Community Foundation.  Foundation President & CEO Paul Plagenz told the QCBJ he initially reached out to Mr. Nelson to see if there were shops still available in BizTown where the importance of philanthropy could be added to the educational experience.  Unfortunately they were all taken, so the pair worked together and came up with the creation of what Mr. Plagenz called “this beautiful Giving Tree” which was “planted” on a city street. That colorful “tree” will give students the opportunity to make decisions about how they want to give back to the community. For example, they’ll have three different charities to choose from to donate to. This year’s age-appropriate selections are Living Lands & Water, River Bend Food Bank and Niabi Zoo.

Teaching habit of giving

For the newly rebranded Moline Regional Community Foundation, its $60,000 investment in the Giving Tree is worth it because it will serve as a visible example of giving for the thousands of students and volunteers who come through the program every year.  “We wanted the nonprofits to be represented,” Mr. Plagenz said in hopes that it will teach students from an early age the habit of giving. The project also is a perfect fit for the foundation’s new tagline “‘Your giving in action.” The interior space that includes the tree and all the individual business and city “shops” was designed by a “wonderful team” from Edwards Creative in Milan. It worked from concept to design to create the layout of the whole space and worked with each individual business to create their studios, Steve Edwards told the QCBJ. Edwards Creative also is one of the 15 companies based in Biztown. “Us being in here permanently is going to be fun,” Mr. Edwards said. “I think we’ve come up with a unique way for kids to get into graphic design a little bit.” In addition to creating a design, for example, student “employees” also will be required to install it.  The project was a great fit since the Edwards family has a long association with JA.

Edwards' JA roots go deep

In June, Steve Edwards' father, Jim Edwards of Edwards Cast Stone Company, was posthumously inducted into the Junior Achievement of the Heartland Business Hall of Fame in Dubuque, Iowa. The current generation not only supports JA, it has benefited from it. “Our kids went through the program so it was really cool for them to see all of this,” Steve Edwards said. It’s also exciting that one of his nephews designed the exterior spaces so in a way the project is an Edwards family affair. And they’re not the only ones who are planting roots in the new JA Inspiration Center, Among the fans who toured the JA Inspiration Center’s new home Tuesday was Meyer Wikoff. She’s the daughter of Hailey and Erin Wikoff and served as the elected mayor of BizTown in the Davenport location last year. “I got into the previous building and I was so excited to see what the day would bring,” she told the crowd. “I can’t imagine what this year’s students will think when they get into the new building. It is so cool.”  She credited the program with helping her “figure out that I want to be a leader when I get older,” and she called it “an experience that I will always remember. Who knows, maybe someday I’ll be mayor of a real city.”