HURON – When school bells ring for the first time each fall, there’s often a new kid in the classroom.
Jim Borszich was that new kid more than a dozen times.
“As a young child, I started school in Gettysburg in first grade and I graduated my senior year 16 schools later, so that’s how much we traveled,” he said.
His dad served in a military security role in the Air Force, and was stationed at bases in Hawaii, California, Texas and at Ellsworth outside of Rapid City. He was frequently overseas on year-long stints in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Turkey and South Korea.
Borszich, his siblings and their mom would remain stateside.
“It made it tough,” he said of all the times they’d be packing their bags for yet another move. “I’m a little more social and outgoing than my brother and sister are. It made it really tough on them.
“When you’re in that military life, you kind of get used to that and all your friends and acquaintances are people that are doing the same types of things.”
As he became a young man and began seriously considering his future, a career in banking appealed to him, especially after he enrolled in management training at a local bank in his hometown of Gettysburg. As he rose through the ranks to top positions in his field, he and his own young family moved often – to Presho, Corsica, Havre, Mont., and finally Huron.
He decided to leave banking after 24 years when the owners of a group of nine banks decided to offer shares in the company to the public for the first time.
“I’m a community banker, not a corporate banker,” Borszich said. “There’s a distinct difference between those.”
In 1996, after taking some time off to consider his business options, the Borszichs decided on a path they knew would help fill a need in Huron. They were also set on staying here.
“One of the things that I knew was very much of a need was hotel accommodations, additional ones, and that’s when we built the Holiday Inn Express,” he said.
At the time, it was the 200th hotel in the franchise. Today, there are about 3,600. The Borszichs would later sell the hotel, and after a couple of recent ownership changes the Huron hotel is now known as the Quality Inn.
Borszich also served on the Greater Huron Development Board. When GHDC Executive Director Shawn Lyons accepted a position as executive director of the South Dakota Retailers Association, the GHDC board asked Borszich to fill in for a year.
The development corporation was working with two new prospects – Dakota Provisions and Ridgefield Farms – and the board needed help with financial expertise. As a member of the Huron City Commission, Borszich had also done some preliminary work with the Walmart project.

Dakota Provisions has become a major employer in Huron, while the Ridgefield Farms deal fell apart.
Borszich’s one-year commitment with GHDC is now coming to an end, 12 years later.
He is retiring as president and chief executive officer of GHDC at the end of December.
In those dozen years, he has stood at the podium in the City Commission room every six months to brief board members and the public about the ongoing work of the corporation.
He and other representatives of local agencies and organizations that rely on annual allocations from the city of Huron to help fund their budgets give those regular updates.
“They’re valuable in the relationship between the development corporation and the city to make sure that we stay good partners,” he said.
He encourages people to pay attention to those briefings through newspaper coverage and public access television broadcasts.
“What we do share with the City Commission at that time are things that we can share,” Borszich said.
There are times he can only speak in generalities because of confidentiality agreements with prospects they are working with.
“It somewhat handicaps us in trying to keep the community and the commission up to date, but I don’t know how else you can do it, quite frankly,” he said.
Confidentiality, until there can be a public announcement, also means the public may not have an appreciation of how long it takes to land a new industry or hammer out the details on a company expansion.
Huron’s latest success story involving the Southtown development featuring new residential and commercial projects took five years to come to fruition, he said.
“It just didn’t happen in the last 30 days or 60 days when ground was broken on all the projects,” Borszich said.
“I’m extremely pleased that the projects are all up and going so the general public does know that we weren’t kidding them,” he said. “We really have significant plans for that particular area.”
Of all the projects Borszich has been involved with, first as a GHDC board member and then as president and chief executive officer, he points to Splash Central and Central Park as both the most challenging and the most rewarding.
“It was a unique project and a project that would never have happened had it not been for all the players, including the general public,” he said.
Once people understood the details of the financial package, they got on board with the project and contributed more than $4 million in a community campaign that lasted just 45 days.
“That is almost unheard of,” Borszich said.
City commissioners also had the foresight to have money in reserve for a project, knowing that at some point the old swimming pool would have to be replaced.
He reminds people that GHDC owns the park and leases it to the city, but that ends in July 2019 when the New Market Tax Credit money expires and the property is deeded to the city.
“Not many communities can brag about having a facility like ours has become and very few realize that in 2019 the city will own that entire property, including the Fine Arts building and the Campus Center free and clear,” Borszich said.
“There won’t be any additional tax dollars to pay debt on it because of the unique financing package we put together,” he said.
While the community has worked hard and witnessed recent successes, Borszich said the two biggest challenges facing Huron remain a shortage of skilled workers to fill some 400 to 500 job openings and a sufficient number of housing units for the growing population.
New single- and multi-family housing opportunities will ease the crunch somewhat, but studies show Huron continues to have a need for more.
“We’re light years behind some of the other communities in the number of housing units built annually, but we’ve made some good strides in the last year or two,” he said.

Photo:

Jim Borszich stands in front of the counter at the Huron Chamber and Visitors Bureau and Greater Huron Development Corporation office on Dakota Ave. south in Huron. Borszich will retire as executive director of Greater Huron Development at the end of the year.

Photo by Roger Larsen/Plainsman