Eureka Foundation

03/12/2026

01/15/2026

https://www.facebook.com/share/p/17hq1hu6TW/

Lieutenant Governor and Secretary of Commerce David Toland today announced that the Department of Commerce is launching an initiative to identify vacant, abandoned or underutilized buildings suitable for redevelopment into housing units. Local leaders, community organizations and property owners can...

03/04/2025

https://eurekakansas.com/documents/criswell-scholarship-application/

05/19/2024

Although we have enjoyed a lot of folks moving to our fair town, we continue to lose about 1% a year overall. One big reason: housing. What are your thoughts?

05/13/2024

Peace found here.

04/24/2024

Revitalization is a simple enough proposition. The buildings that make up a downtown must be economically productive. Economically productive = buildings in good shape, and occupied by successful commercial tenants. This is it. This is the ultimate goal of any revitalization effort and if this is accomplished, you’ve succeeded. Any initiative that works towards this end is positive and any initiative that doesn’t impact this area is unproductive and needs reconsidered. Reason being, at the end of the day, a downtown must be economically viable, which means the buildings must be economically viable.

What is downtown after-all, but an area of public space defined on its edges by buildings. The public space can and should be highly inviting, attractive and walkable, but will never be the true draw of its own. This space must be encompassed by attractive, productive buildings. It is the buildings people use and visit. A healthy commercial district might be full of beautiful civic buildings and have perfect sidewalks and lush hanging baskets, but unless it is also composed of privately owned buildings and businesses, it will never function properly.

Revitalization efforts must be directed towards real estate. This is the greatest concern. Dilapidated and vacant buildings are the single greatest problem. If every other facet of a downtown is absolutely perfect, it would still be dead if all the buildings were empty.

Events can be fun, but they don’t address the real estate issue. Parking is a useful utility and has a bearing on real estate, but not nearly as much as people think. Beautification can have an impact on real estate, but is not a stand alone strategy. If we aim to be successful at restoring downtown to its rightful place as the heart of the community, we have to address real estate ownership.

04/01/2024

I once spoke to a woman in Vermont who told me that she had lived in her current community for 60 years, but she wasn’t from there. Hold up, time out. When you live in a place for 60 years, you are from there. You don’t have to add the qualifier that you are from somewhere else. Sure, if that’s important to your identity, great, share it up but at some point, we have to embrace the community we have spent three score calling home.

Neighborliness and being community-minded are concepts we should work hard to revive. Just because they have faded in popularity, doesn’t mean they aren’t worth bringing back in style. Cooking with local ingredients fell out of favor for a few decades before being brought back from the dead and it’s safe to say, it’s been a positive change.

I suspect that we are part of the first generation that didn’t learn how to behave neighborly while growing up. Cultivating a sense of community wasn’t something our parents taught us. It was not something they practiced, so how could we pick it up? The boomers were the first generation of suburbanites and they were seeking to escape the evils of being around other people. TV taught them to despise density and politicians scared them away from all things urban. As their children, how can we be blamed for not valuing something we never even knew existed?

That doesn’t mean we can’t learn to appreciate those we share a community with and figure out how to support one another. It only means we haven’t YET. Collectively, we can help revive the art of being neighborly, show others how to strengthen the fabric of community, and teach the generations to follow us the benefits of fostering more social ties. Why let something that is so integral to our happiness remain hidden away in obscurity?

Study after study shows that one of the greatest determinants of a person’s happiness is his or her social connections. These days, we cast community relationships aside as being less important than material concerns, but increasingly the science shows we do this at our own peril. Friends make us happy, neighbors make us feel connected, a strong sense of community makes us feel a sense of belonging. The more close social ties we have, the more we feel supported and safe.

So how can we go about being more neighborly and strengthening the fabric of our community? The simplest way is to do more of your existing activities with others. Reading a new book? Ask your neighbors if they want to read the same book and discuss it. Feel like having some after-work drinks? Invite a few people you know to join you. Consider what you do on a regular basis and which of those activities would be improved by doing it with other people. You can be sure that other people are doing the same thing and would enjoy having some company.

People in your town want to hang out with other people, but maybe they aren’t comfortable asking, or don’t know how to get started. Help them out!

03/21/2024

This Wednesday, March 27, the Eureka Foundation is holding a Match Day Giving Event. Through the Patterson Family Foundation, the Eureka Foundation would receive a match up to $70,000 in donations if the grant is approved. All funds donated will assist Greenwood County Hospital (GWCH) with costs associated with acquiring the CareArc building, which is now the home of the Eureka Clinic.

“While we have allocated funds for the purchase of the building,” stated GWCH CEO Sandra Dickerson, “these donations and the potential matching grant would allow GWCH to reallocate those funds to better the hospital and serve our patients in other ways.” She continued, “We are grateful for the support shown by our community and for the opportunity to partner with the Eureka Foundation and the Patterson Family Foundation.”

Donations for this Match Day Event can be made to the Eureka Foundation with ‘clinic purchase donation’ in the memo and submitted to Isaac Boone directly at Eureka Pharmacy at 1602 N. Elm St, Eureka, KS 67045 (9 A.M. – 6 P.M.) or at the Greenwood County Hospital Business Office at 100 W. 16th St., Eureka, KS 67045 (7:30 A.M. – 4:30 P.M.). Donations must be made on Wednesday, March 27th to qualify for the Match Day event. For additional information, contact President Isaac Boone at [email protected] or 620-583-5488.