I was a professor at a Michigan University and was contacted by a dean and told a member of the Kellogg foundation wanted get some ideas on how the city of Battle Creek could revitalize its downtown area. I had been advocating for closer ties between cities and education.

Battle Creek is beautiful! Beautiful store fronts, a museum and even an IMAX theater. The problem was that no one visited the downtown. Seems when Kellogg outsourced its cereal production overseas, all the work force left. So the only visitors were busloads of school kids from neighboring districts, and after a year or two they grew tired of the city.

The man I met - let's call him Jim - was in his eighties and had been with the company in a senior position all his life. He wanted to leave a legacy and he was responsible for the museum and IMAX. Could I help him revitalize his town?

I have long watched downtowns die in America because of malls and outsourced jobs. I did have an idea.

Simply, the idea was to make the entire downtown a learning community, where students from high school, college and university would come to do service learning projects and internships, learning from the store owners and bring to them the skills they learned in their classrooms.

They would also be part of a think tank. New, small businesses would be started and tried out, linked to the Internet and online sales. Jim liked my idea, said he believed he could find $1 million from the foundation to put towards this; but no one at the university was interested.

So I learned a lesson, but I do think downtown Albany could be America's first commercial learning community if there is a will.

Peter Saunders, Albany