The arts are not only fun, but they're a growing south-metro industry
Everytime I stop at JoJo’s Rise & Wine in downtown Burnsville, or stop at Jensen’s Café for my BLT salad, I can’t help but check on the progress being made on the Burnsville Performing Arts Center and think about the role the arts are playing in our south-of-the-river communities. We’ve got an industry growing in the cities where Thisweek covers the news of government, schools, community life and culture.
That culture coverage is housed in a section we started last summer. It’s called Thisweekend and is becoming a more popular place for organizations to list their happenings and for hospitality businesses to advertise their food, drink and entertainment. Those advertisers make up the industry that JoJo’s, Jensen’s and the PAC are part of. In the nine years I’ve lived south of the river, our communities have been making investments in the arts and related entertainment businesses. In effect, the arts-and-entertainment industry has been giving us less reason to venture north of the river to enjoy a play, concert or a good restaurant.
Eagan has had the Caponi Art Park for many years, and the trend was joined in 2001 by my community of Lakeville, where the city decided to buy the old All Saints Catholic Church and turn it into a magnificent center for the visual and performing arts. Burnsville decided it needed its own arts center and, despite some controversy over whether public money should be spent on it, a majority of the City Council decided to join the arts-center party. As Burnsville editor John Gessner has reported, the city has hired a management company to run the center, and that management company has hired a director to manage the place. Over in Rosemount, Thisweek Managing Editor Tad Johnson and Rosemount Editor Jessica Harper have been following the discussion that has led to a bond-issue vote over items that include an arts center for that community.
Back in Burnsville, a guy named Scott Winters has been quietly building another magnificent arts facility in the mansion that used to house the Minnesota River School of Fine Art, which closed because the owners of that mansion ran out of money to keep subsidizing the school. Scott is the founder and operator of the Minnesota Valley Academy of Music, which got displaced by the Heart of the City project. He relocated to a warehouse near the old mansion, and he put together a group to buy the place for his school and other arts organizations. A wealthy businessman later took Scott’s non-profit off the hook and agreed to finance the venture.
It’s now the home to the music school, a dance school, an arts store and many artists who need a place to paint or play or otherwise pursue the talent that many of us wish we had but don’t. So we pay to see those who do at such places as the Lakeville center or the Burnsville center that will open late this year or early next. And it will be fun to watch the development of entertainment districts surrounding the arts centers. In downtown Lakeville, a new wine bar and restaurant has opened adjacent to Mainstreet Coffee Café. Tracy Hummelgard, owner of the coffee shop and the wine bar/restaurant, plans to promote her beautiful bistro as a place to have a bite to eat and a glass of wine or beer before or after an arts center event. And in Burnsville’s Heart of the City, Jensen’s Café, Jo-Jo’s and other eating and drinking establishments stand to benefit from the opening of the 1,000-seat Burnsville arts center.
It’s my theory that the ridiculously-inadequate roadway called I-35 has contributed to the growth of cultural establishments in Dakota County. Getting to Minneapolis or St. Paul is such a hassle that folks down here are looking for ways to have fun without the trip to the Cities. Will the entertainment districts emerging in our south-metro communities someday rival Hennepin Avenue or the area around Rice Park? Probably not. But good things are happening in the arts and entertainment in the community served by Thisweekend.
