Nicole Hofert does not back away from a challenge. Whether studying in London or taking on a newly created leadership role for the city of Wyoming, the Fort Smith, Arkansas native relishes the demands of learning an unfamiliar culture and overseeing long-awaited industrial and residential developments in key areas of Wyoming that beg for change.

One key redevelopment project is the roughly 80-acre former General Motors stamping plant, 300 36th St. SW between U.S. 131 and Buchanan Avenue, which has set idle for years. It was purchased earlier this year for $5.2 million by lead marketer and development partner Franklin Partners LLC with plans to construct several manufacturing facilities on the site that is zoned heavy industrial. Built in 1936, it was GM’s first facility designed exclusively as a metal fabricating plant. Production ended in 2009.

The city is elated with new industrial development coming to the fore.

“It’s pretty rare for a community the size of Wyoming to have a vacant parcel that large right in the middle of their city and so to see that activated will be great for this community,” Hofert said. “We’re working on a brownfield plan right now. We’re hoping to break ground later this year, but with these times it could be later next year.”

Franklin Partners did not purchase all of the land. The city has kept ownership of a former parking lot that will be used for a seasonal outdoor market as well as parking space for a school district.

“A really exciting part of that project is the city has retained ownership of the north parking lot and we’re actually planning on building a community marketplace for roughly 24 vendors,” Hofert said. “We’ll be preserving part of the parking lot for Godwin Heights (school district) for their athletic events to use. It will be a really nice community centerpiece, especially for that community that was hit so hard by the closure of the GM stamping plant.”

Another development Hofert points to with pride is the nearly 400-unit HōM Flats where the former Studio 28 theater was based, situated in what Hofert refers to as the city’s urban neighborhood known as its city center, or downtown.

“We’re starting to see more multifamily projects come forward,” Hofert said. “There are always complexities and nuances to those kinds of projects and we’re also starting to see a shift in how industrial is brought forward … so I think as the community grows and changes, that’s been a challenge, too, on top of that.”

Hofert initially hired on with Wyoming as principal planner in 2018 and segued to city planner from 2018 to 2021. It was that year the city moved economic development from the city manager’s portfolio and the planning department from community services to form the planning and economic development department of which Hofert was made director.

“I started with a staff of one and we now have a staff a three, so we’re kind of growing that and creating a culture for us, an identity as well as the more technical things, the policies, the procedures,” she said. “Everything that comes with creating something new.”

Hofert fashioned something new for herself when she decided to study abroad while an undergraduate student and then a master’s candidate in 2015, both at the London School of Economic and Political Science.

The workload, expectations of her professors and dissimilar culture stretched Hofert in ways studying in the United States could not. She discovered the British vernacular is not the same as in the States.

“It’s one thing to travel and experience cultures in a shorter time span, it’s a whole other thing to live in another country, especially when one assumes it’s very similar to America but when you’re actually there, even the English isn’t English,” Hofert said. “At that time, I was starting to form my own opinions about a lot of things, policy things. It was a tremendous experience.

“It was honestly the hardest I ever worked in my life, but very rewarding. There’s a difference in the level that they expect. The amount of reading and how I had to structure my arguments in my papers and my essays — some of that might be because I spoke like an American so I may have been taken aback a little bit. Part of it is the way you create your argument, the way you lay out your facts, do your research and present your case. I’m sure there are many institutions in the U.S. that could rival that, but for me that was a great experience.”

In a real sense, Hofert considers her education in London a forerunner to her work for Wyoming, meaning she sees things outside of the box instead of adhering to the status quo.

“I think that has made me challenge things a little along the way because I wasn’t born and raised here,” she said. “I ask why have we always done it this way, knowing I’ve been to places where it’s done differently. I think that’s a valuable asset or skill that I bring to the table that maybe someone else can’t.”

Working as a municipal city planner is an enigma to some people, Hofert acknowledges, a fact she herself was unclear about when she worked in the private sector before hiring on in Wyoming, first for MIG in Denver, Colorado, from 2016-18 as a project associate and earlier, a consultant for the startup architecture and design firm Hales Architecture + Planning in Toledo, Ohio, from 2014-16 and administrator from 2011-14.

“I didn’t understand the role of the municipal planner even though I worked regularly with them on projects,” Hofert said. “When I came here, I saw that there are people who are very passionate about the community, but they don’t understand about becoming involved with the master plan, for example. They don’t understand the types of decisions we make as an organization and how that can be impactful to them in their future.

“Simple things like where we allow commercial to occur, why land use is important, things like that. And I think that oftentimes my role is less explaining the technical component of things and oftentimes just explaining more of the nuances of why planning is important in the first place. Now, do you want to have a park adjacent to where you live or work? Why is it important you should be able to drive from where you work to where you live and have destinations along the way where you stop at to meet your daily needs? So, for me, it’s helping people understand why these decisions are important.”

Growing up, Hofert had her heart set on becoming a veterinarian or marine biologist for all the right reasons.

“I love animals,” she said. “I volunteered at a veterinarian clinic when I was younger because I really thought that is the road I wanted to take and then I got into high school and realized chemistry and biology were a lot harder than I thought they were going to be. And I started getting interested in all these other areas, so it fell by the wayside.”

Hofert’s family relocated when she was in elementary school to Sylvania, a 6.68-square-mile suburb of Toledo, Ohio. Now when she goes back to visit relatives, she sees her childhood neighborhood through a different lens.

“Now it’s interesting when I go back, I look at the community and think I wouldn’t have done that, or I wouldn’t have approved that or why did they do that?” she said. “Not a critique necessarily in how they’ve done things. You go back at it later and go, yeah, that’s not how I remember it, that’s not how I would have done it.”