ORANGE — The founder and president of a nonprofit dedicated to helping American cities and towns achieve or return to prosperity delivered a presentation at Wheeler Memorial Library last week.

Charles Marohn of Strong Towns spoke to an audience of nearly 20 interested locals, debunking myths about financial resiliency and proposing measures that can be taken to obtain it. He started by showing attendees an 1870 photo of his hometown in Minnesota. He explained many towns started with the construction of simple, temporary structures built with available materials.

“In fact, if we went back in time, every city that was ever founded prior to the Great Depression, every city that was ever founded around the world, started just like this,” he said. “A few people that came together, put up something small and then kind of had dreams about what it could one day become.”

Marohn said a community starts to grow when complex variables come together.

“And it grows in a way that is very organic. It grows like a culture in a petri dish would grow,” he said. “It grows incrementally up, incrementally out, and it starts to thicken up and mature in place.”

Marohn compared the evolution of a municipality to that of a human, growing from a baby to an adult. He highlighted Muskegon, Michigan, which his nonprofit named as the 2018 Strongest Town. To give the city a shot of adrenaline and to combat high poverty rates, shed-like structures were built in the downtown area to house businesses for entrepreneurs at incredibly low rent prices, he said. This, as well as sand volleyball courts and some portable toilets, invigorated the area.

“We need entrepreneurs,” Marohn said. “Entrepreneurs are heroes.”

Marohn also said land increases in value as more people move to the area.

Orange resident Joshua Myrvaagnes, who moved to town from the Boston area 2½ years ago, learned about Strong Towns and scheduled Wednesday’s presentation.

“It was beyond my expectations,” Myrvaagnes said of Wednesday’s event. “It was really important to get to see those images of the early buildings, and Charles’ passion is just so infectious. That’s the main thing. I had such a feeling of hope of what we can do here in Orange.”

Myrvaagnes said he was particularly inspired by the information about Muskegon, Michigan, and said he hopes it sparks a conversation in town.

Library Director Jason Sullivan-Flynn said Myrvaagnes approached him with the idea for the event.

“I thought it was a good program in that I think that it addressed some of the concerns that people have in Orange,” he said. “I also like that some solutions that were presented — even the ones that I didn’t necessarily agree with — were achievable.”

More information is available at strongtowns.org.

Reach Domenic Poli at: dpoli@recorder.com or 413-930-4120.