2024 Partner Party Recap
Every year, Red Wing Downtown Main Street hosts an event for our Partners and Volunteers, to thank them for their contributions and to update everyone on upcoming Downtown Main Street events. This year’s party was held on July 8th at Red Wing Ignite, with a Magical Fairies theme.
The theme was chosen because on August 16th, Downtown Main Street will host its first Fairy Fest. To bring the fairy spirit to the party there were fairy- and fairy house-shaped cookies on the snack table. Over fifty community members and business owners attended the party to eat those cookies as well as food catered by Welch’s Bleu Dog Cafe.
Awards
First on the agenda was honoring two Red Wing community members for their contributions to the culture of downtown Red Wing. In keeping with the fairy motif, both award winners were presented with miniature dioramas create by Director of Downtown Main Street, Megan Tsui.
Brent Jaynes was honored first with a Red Wing Shoe store miniature, called the “Maverick in Mock Toes Leadership Award.” Brent’s day job is with the Red Wing Shoe Company, but he started working with Downtown Main Street in 2014. Since then he has been on the Business Development Committee, and was President of the board from April of 2015 to the end of 2023 when he reached his two-term limit.
Brent was honored not just for the time he’s put into Downtown Main Street but also for the changes he’s made. He describes the changes as “crawl, walk, run,” where they started with fundraising, but moved into getting grants, and then partnering with foundations to help downtown become more robust.
The work of helping downtown and local businesses has always been the reward for Brent, but he says that receiving the award was the “cherry on top” of his years of service.
The next award of the night, the “Art Visionary Award,” went to Curt Gruhl. Curt first came to Red Wing in 1966, and spent about 20 years working in the Red Wing schools as a business and computer teacher before working in the finance department of a golf course management company. But his primary avocation has always been art. In recent years he has worked with his group, Public Art Liaisons (PALS) and the Wings Foundation to foreground art in and around downtown Red Wing. He headed up the downtown sculpture tour, and he led the charge to get the metal banners installed along the reconstructed Highway 61. He has also worked to get the mosaic benches placed around downtown, and is one of the voices in charge of the upcoming Art in the Alley event.
Curt may be the one who got the award, but he wants to be sure everyone knows that many people did just as much work as him to help keep Red Wing beautiful.
Written by: Charlie Gillmer
Photos by: Pam Dusbabek