Third Places in North Platte

The community in which I work, North Platte, Nebraska is embarking on a "Community Branding" process. As part of the development of our brand, we were encouraged to cultivate "Third Places." We all have our homes, which are our first places. Our place of work is our second place. Our third place is where we go to hang out with our friends. Strong, growing, vibrant communities are all characterized by the variety of activity at their third places.

I am fortunate enough to be a part of the committee working on developing those third places. We have many other projects, but one highly visible and nominally successful one is the NRoute Entertainment Fort Cody Music Series.

NRoute Entertainment has three goals:

• Provide Third Places for residents of North Platte - and help going to those third places become a habit.


• Provide quality "listening room" type venues for traveling artists "nroute" between more major gigs.


• Provide quality entertainment for travelers "nroute" to their homes or final destinations.

We chose the iconic Fort Cody Trading Post for our series which began in June and finished up in August. As you can see from the credits that roll at the end of the second video, we had amazing artists grace our stage.

We are looking to build on this series next year. All of these artists deserve to have packed houses enjoying their music, and it will be our goal to provide it for them.

Thanks for stopping by. Make plans to join us next year for this series... the coffee will be on.