Economic Development

The Summerfield community offers high speed internet, low priced real estate, friendly people, low cost utilities, no crime, and a slower pace of life. Due to forward thinking by the local telecommunications company, BlueValley, the high speed internet is available in the rural areas outside of the city limits too. There are building sites with utilities in Summerfield that would be suitable for some light industry or retail. The city and county governments are committed to cutting any red tape that a future entrepreneur might encounter.

Many rural communities and small towns are facing challenges and Summerfield is no exception. Rural population decline has been a constant for the last hundred years as the farms have grown in size. For a small town, Summerfield is holding its own and we believe that we can buck the trend of our peer cities. There is real civic mindedness in Summerfield and there is almost always some project that the community is pushing forward on. See below for a few recent examples. The silver lining in the black cloud of declining populations is that our community has several business opportunities with no one to take advantage of.

Challenges yet to conquer

While Summerfield’s Main Street has a restaurant, bank, gas station, and mechanic, unfortunately the town is without a grocery store at present. Our town was able to support a thriving grocery store until the owners retired a few years ago. This lack of a grocery store might be an opportunity for the right person.

Summerfield was also home to an assisted living center that is now on the market due to the advancing age of the administrator. This building could be repurposed for many uses.

Summerfield is blessed to have high speed internet 5GB/s and yet there are very few cottage industries taking advantage of our amazing IT infrastructure. This would be ideal for various Ebay or Amazon storefronts or people who can do their job with a laptop and WiFi.

Challenges overcome

Our community faced a challenge head on back in 2013 when our beloved Classic Cafe was a victim of a wind storm that took out a wall. The community rallied. In August 2013 at a community wide meeting a group was formed with the ambitious goal of building a new cafe. Money was raised from monthly breakfasts, raffles, and donations and soon $150,00.00 was raised. The concrete foundation was poured on April 9, 2014. Construction of the building was done by local volunteers. “Border Bar & Grill'' was selected for the name and the opening day was May 9, 2015.

Losing a local school to consolidation left the community with a handsome 25,000 square foot building and a 11 acre campus. This presented a challenge to the community to find a use for the building that would be beneficial to the community and the world at large. The community had a history of supporting veterans, in particular, transitional housing for veterans. It was decided to pursue a program to train veterans in the latest techniques of small scale food-to-table farming. Ellen Barber, the Marshall County Economic Development director, led the team that obtained funding for what ultimately became Transition Plus. Transition Plus is a 501(c)(3) non-profit that will conduct the training programs and other ancillary programs for veterans. The operation is just getting off the ground with a staff of six. Transition Plus received some help from two groups of Americorp Volunteers when the building was being upgraded and the original tower farms were erected. We are very grateful for their hard work.

A few years ago, it was clear that the Summerfield City Park’s playground equipment was in need of an upgrade. Over $100,000.00 was raised through a combination of fundraising efforts and success in obtaining grants by the local women of the town, most of them mothers and grandmothers. The new equipment arrived in large wooden boxes in the Spring of 2022 and a flurry of activity commenced before planting season. The work crew for the most part consisted of the fathers and grandfathers.

Summerfield Economic Development Group

Several of the people who were active in Transition Plus have discovered that they are doing economic development with or without the label. They along with many other groups in the Summerfield area are interested in keeping the momentum going. This website is an outreach effort by this group of people. We hope that the website will allow us to get our story out to people across the country who may be attracted to our opportunities and the ways of life in our community.

Our economic development group is in its early stages and is headed by Rosalie Meybrunn. She has a wealth of knowledge about the opportunities in our area and would be glad to field any inquiries. Please reach out to her either through her email at rmeybrunn@hotmail.com or by phone at 785-244-6565 or on the Contact Us page or by mail at:

We work closely with Ellen Barber, the director of the Marshall County Partnership for Growth.