Jeremy Cox | The Daily Times

Meet Eli Modlin.

He is 24 years old. He just bought a house in Salisbury. He works as one of the top aides to the president of Salisbury University. And he's a native of the Baltimore suburb of Catonsville.

Conventional wisdom holds that millennials like Modlin prefer living in big cities — with a plethora of ethnic restaurants and job opportunities — over small towns.

“I’m from the big city. I wanted that," said Modlin, a 2016 SU graduate and now deputy chief of staff and director of government and community relations. "But at the same time, I thought what was happening here was too much to pass up on.”

That's exactly what places like Salisbury want to hear. Only millennials have been fewer and farther between than the city hoped when it embarked a few years ago on a rebranding campaign under its 36-year-old mayor, Jake Day.

From 2000-2010, the number of people ages 25 to 34 with a college degree increased 82 percent, according to census figures. Then, that flow mysteriously stopped. That population has shrunk 5 percent over the past eight years, even as the city as a whole has gotten younger and more educated.

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“It kind of seems like the 25- to 34-year-olds from 2000-2010s are continuing to attract people their age and they're having kids," said Day, who has made drawing young professionals to town one of his top priorities.

But, he added, "There’s this kind of doughnut hole of 25- to 34-year-olds that is not significantly growing, and I don’t know what the answer is to that.”

There's an urgency to finding that answer. Now that the first millennials are entering their mid-30s, demographers and economists say it is a critical time for them and the cities trying to woo them.

"What is changing is that as they age and get married and have kids, they’re becoming a lot more responsible with their behavior and becoming more engaged in their community," said Memo Diriker, a Salisbury University economics professor.

Each generation in recent memory repeats the same progression, said Bill Frey, a demographer at the Brookings Institution who specializes in millennials. They start out in big cities, then move to suburbs and small towns to raise a family.

“I’m not yet convinced this is the trend of the future that all young generations are going to the city and staying there," Frey said.

The attention toward millennials in Salisbury extends beyond Day to the Chamber of Commerce, to employers and even to churches. All are bending their ways to be more hospitable to the generation that considers high-speed internet a birthright and prefers "experiences" over consumer goods.

But will it be enough to reverse recent history and begin attracting the young professional class again?

“This is always going to be an issue," said Shannon Downes, who, as a 21-year-old SU student, is just the kind of resident Salisbury would like to tempt into staying.“Unless you’re a professor at the university or work at the hospital, there’s not a lot to do as far as working around here.”

The answer Day and others have been searching for may lie with millennials themselves.

The grass may not be greener

To see how, visit the small but well-stocked retail store on the Business Route 50 side of an aging building on the Downtown Plaza.

Bryan Whipple, 29, opened the store to fill what he saw as a glaring void in the city's retail sector. There was a shop in The Centre at Salisbury mall that sells some skateboards and related clothing but nowhere catering to the devoted skater.

Staff Photo by Ralph Musthaler

Last October, Lurking Class Skate Shop was born.

Whipple said he needed the mayor's help to get this far. With Day's encouragement and advice, he started the business out of a concession trailer at the city's newly constructed skate park.

“I wouldn’t be here in this shop if it wasn’t for him," Whipple said.

Whipple's wife, Eva, followed a similar path toward entrepreneurship.

When Soul Yoga Studio opened in 2013, it was the first of its kind in the city to operate behind a commercial storefront. Eva Whipple, 26, took the reins a few years ago after the studio's founder, Jennifer Mitchell, moved to South Carolina.

Staff Photo by Ralph Musthaler

The business now has a full schedule and has expanded to a dozen teachers. It recently became the first studio on the Lower Shore to receive accreditation from the Yoga Alliance to train and certify new yoga instructors.

Soul Yoga has thrived precisely because of Salisbury's relatively small size, Eva Whipple said.

“In a bigger city, the market would be saturated. In markets as big as this, it’s surprising we didn’t have a studio like the one we have now sooner, and we didn’t have a skate shop," she said.

A few years ago, Eva Whipple noticed something else was missing: a roller derby team. So she founded the Salisbury Rollergirls.

Staff Photo by Ralph Musthaler

She and Bryan have a 2-year-old daughter, Lois, and welcomed a second child this year. They've certainly talked about what it would be like to live somewhere else, somewhere more bustling. But the Delmarva natives ultimately decided Salisbury is their home and they should make the best of it.

“I feel it’s a grass-is-greener-type mentality," Eva Whipple said of those who choose to decamp. "I’ve always been a 'water the grass and it will be greener' person.”

Behind the Salisbury brain drain

Salisbury's business and civic community has long fought to counter the area's brain drain, an exodus of young, educated people, particularly SU students after they pick up their diplomas.

SU graduates account for about 6 percent of Wicomico's population, according to the university.

Downes was one of five undergraduates who surveyed their classmates last fall about their post-college plans. The class assignment yielded unsurprising results to the group, the communications major said.

Two-thirds of the 47 participants said they plan to move "back home" after graduation while less than a tenth saw themselves staying in Salisbury. The rest were "not sure," according to the paper. .

The most-cited reasons for leaving: "I do not want to live in this area" and "not enough job opportunities."

Downes, a communications major who hails from Hagerstown, Maryland, is among those departing.

“I wasn’t honestly surprised" by the survey, she said, pointing to the city's relative dearth of entertainment outlets and good-paying employers. "I would rather go to a big city or something.”

The paper's findings are typical of what previous student surveys have found, Diriker said. More than 90 percent of those receiving their degrees at the university take that knowledge elsewhere.

But the group's results, Diriker added, diverge from his more recent research, which shows ripening conditions for young people to make Salisbury their home.

Collectively, the focus groups and surveys conducted by his business think tank at SU suggest that “the reality is the brain drain we used to suffer is not as bad as it was," Diriker said.

D'Shawn Doughty worries whether he'll find a good job in in Salisbury when he graduates from SU next year. He's from here and wants to stay here.

“What Salisbury is known for is if you didn’t work for (Peninsula Regional Medical Center), Perdue or the schools, there’s no jobs," he said.

Is that changing?

“Slowly," Doughty replied, "but it’s not enough.”

So, like Eva and Bryan Whipple, the 23-year-old is thrusting himself into a small town's void. To a schedule that already included a sales job in the mobile phone department at Best Buy, employment as a school truancy officer and college classes, he recently added a title with the Salisbury Jaycees.

In February, he helped organize a Random Acts of Kindness Week in the community.

“I know it sounds clichèd, but I really want to fix where I’m from. Everyone wants to move away and find a better place. But I want to make my home a better place," Doughty said.

Finding a new generation

Newcomers to Oak Ridge Baptist Church might be forgiven for thinking they have stumbled onto a rock concert.

Pulsing music permeates the parking lot on the eastern flank of a shopping center on Business Route 50, a stone's throw from the Salisbury bypass. Inside, the vibe is anything but somber.

“Smoke and lights and the whole nine yards," said Brian Moss, Oak Ridge's lead pastor. “The sense is if it’s too loud, you’re too old.”

The church was founded in 1962, and it staged traditional religious services for its first few decades. By the time Moss was brought on board in 1999, the congregation had dwindled to about 35 members.

“We made a decision as a church to reach people other churches weren't reaching," he said. "You had to do things others weren’t doing.”

It worked. Today, Oak Ridge boasts 1,300 regular attendees.

But Moss isn't resting on his laurels. Three years ago, in response to market research suggesting that millennials are averse to megachurches, he led an overhaul of the church that transformed it from one "big box" facility to a pair of smaller venues.

One is the raucous, concert-like environment; the other, an intimate showcase for softer music and acoustic instruments.

Moss and other church leaders also have made a point of replacing retiring staff members with young people.

He sees a similar shift happening beyond Oak Ridge's walls.

For too long, as Moss sees it, Salisbury's political and regulatory atmosphere was anti-business. The lack of jobs, in turn, stifled any hopes for an influx of young, educated workers.

“I would say the strides being made are absolutely moving us in the right direction," he said. "The legacy they’ve been dealing with the last 15 to 20 years is young people starting out leave. In their mind, if they’re going to have a successful career, they’re not going to find that in Salisbury.

"The ones that stay," he added, "try to adapt their career to the conditions.”

"I want you to stay here"

Day, the 36-year-old mayor, can relate to their plight.

The son of a Perdue executive who has since become the agribusiness giant's CEO, Day left home for college at the University of Maryland. Then his studies took him even farther afield, to Carnegie Mellon University in Pennsylvania and Oxford University in England.

He pushes back vigorously at the notion that Salisbury has insufficient amenities for younger adults. A mental list pours forth at the very mention: a free zoo, fishing and kayaking the city's creek's and ponds, bike riding, an outsized shopping district for its size, a beach 30 minutes away.

But Day admits the city needs “additional gems in the crown."

So his administration courted the National Folk Festival, which travels from city to city every three years. The free event is expected to attract 60,000 to 80,000 people when it kicks off this September and generate $15-$30 million in the local economy, city officials said.

Years of planning and debating the future of the city's slumbering downtown have given over to tangible progress, with an update of Main Street inching forward block by block. The near future holds the metamorphosis of the library parking lot into apartments and retail space and a colorful makeover of the parking garage's drab facade.

The city's bid for millennials-cum-entrepreneurs also includes a direct pitch. Known as "Buy a Home, Build a Business," the program offers $5,000 in down payment and closing cost assistance to college upperclassmen or those who have graduated within the past five years.

That money isn't free. To qualify, applicants must stitch together a business plan. But they get $500 to cover business expenses, not to mention free city legal services and consultation with the mayor and a business development specialist.

The program, funded by federal Community Development Block Grant dollars, found takers for its entire $50,000 budget last year, its first in operation, Day said.

The mayor said the value of the effort swells beyond that amount. As an advertising tool, it demonstrates that the community is serious about supporting young professionals, he said.

“I’ve found in my conversations I can look that student in the eye and say, 'I want you to stay here. I want to invest in you,'” Day said.

Then, so the theory goes, that generation will invest back in the community.

“That’s one thing that I try to impart that nobody can take care of your hometown like you can," Day said. "Or go off and have adventures and come back. Certainly, that worked for me."

It worked for Eli Modlin as well.

After SU, he worked in the press shop for the state of Maryland comptroller's office. He was rising in the ranks. But when given the opportunity to return to his alma mater, he came back across the Bay Bridge.

Modlin would rather not be called a lobbyist. But it goes with the job, he will tell you.

However, he isn't paid to promote the interests of the surrounding city of 33,000 or so inhabitants. Yet he slips into that role as easily as he does one of his trademark Oxford shirts.

“If the city looked like it did in 2012, I would have said, 'You know what? I’ll take less money and go back home,' " Modlin said.

As for the present, "I don’t mean to hearken back to Obama of '08, but you have hope for the area and for the city. You feel like it’s happening here, and it makes you want to come back.”

Just like he did.

Perhaps like others will in the future.

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