SOLON — Tuesday, April 29, community development expert Deb Brown was in Solon as part of the Community Horizon’s Speaker Series coordinated by Greater Iowa City and Johnson County. Deb is an author and co-founder of https://saveyour.town/

This speaker series is focused on rural development with several of the area small towns helping to plan this speaker series schedule.

Deb Brown and Sarah Thompson (Johnson County Economic Development Coordinator), were in toured the Solon community and attended the Solon Planning and Zoning Commission Meeting.

As part of the Planning and Zoning meeting Deb Brown led those present through an exercise of taking big ideas and how to move those ideas forward in the small community.

The last speaker event of the series will be held Wednesday, June 11, at Big Grove Brewpub in Solon.

The session is titled Small town Big Dreams – Real Iowa Success Stories/Preparing Your City for Success and will feature Doug Goettsch -Co-founder of Big Grove Brewery, Cheryl Maloney – Owner of The Eat Shop bakery, and City Administrator Cami Rasmussen.

The session is open to the public and here will be a pre-registration for the event, which will be a ‘lunch and learn’ format with a light lunch served. The event is free. We encourage those inter- ested in opening a small business and want to learn more about how to start a busi-
ness in a small town, to attend and hear how Big Grove Brewery and The Eat Shop got their start in Solon.