Hiawatha news
2012 Board officers elected
The Hiawatha Board of Directors elected the following 2012 officers at their January 2012 meeting: Sue Bertram of Marquette, president; Chuck Howe of Gwinn, vice president; Phil Watts of Marquette, treasurer; and Jesse Luttenton of Marquette, secretary.
Other board members are Mike Fitzpatrick, Steve Nelson, J. Pearl Taylor, Julie Foster-Lindquist, Gene Bertram and Doug Kitchel.
A link to our 2011 Annual Meeting minutes and recent Board minutes appears on our Board Minutes page.
Discussions of next Tourist Park contract begin
Hiawatha representatives are now meeting with City staff to discuss our next contract for use of the Tourist Park for our Festival. Our most recent contract ended with the 2011 Festival.
Normally, we'd have our next contract well in hand before the current one expired. However, the death of our attorney Keith Swanson in July 2011 and some unavoidable delays last fall slowed the process. Special thanks to Paul Marin of Marquette, who has succeeded Keith as our attorney.
We feel optimistic that the process will be smooth, as the current City administration and staff seems to appreciate and value all our local events and the groups that produce them.
However, letters of support are always welcome when our contract goes before the Marquette City Commission for a vote. You may send letters of support to info@hiawathamusic.org, or to PO Box 414, Marquette, MI 49855.
Thanks!
Augusta Scholarship winner featured
Walter Krahn, our 2011 Scholarship recipient, made the front page of the Marquette Mining Journal on Sunday, September 25, with color photos and a nice article about traditional music, the Hiawatha Music Co-op, and the Augusta Heritage Center. Click here for a link to the article.
Rest In Peace, Keith Swanson
Hiawatha never had a better friend than Keith Swanson, who passed away July 30, 2011, in Marquette, at age 65. Keith was our attorney from the first day and a devoted Festival-goer. Our thoughts and prayers are with Keith's family, and special thanks to them for selecting Hiawatha for donations in Keith's memory.
Lake Whoa!-Be-Gone update
It's really happening this time
The construction of a new dam on the Dead River at the Marquette Tourist Park continued through the summer of 2011. We should have a real lake by Festival 2012 (July 20-22, 2012).
Performance tent approved as probable set-aside fund use
The Hiawatha board of directors believes they have found a use for approximately two-thirds of the City of Marquette's "set-aside fund," which was established in the early years of the Festival's presence at the Tourist Park.
On June 16, 2009, the Hiawatha board agreed to approve the use of $22,000 of the nearly $35,000 in the fund to support the purchase of a large, portable Arabesque-brand performance tent - as long as the final agreement included a period of free tent use for the Co-op (now tentatively proposed at seven years), and the purchase was supported by other user-group donations and grant money. The Tent can be shared by Marquette-area event groups, including Hiawatha. A tent brochure is available at the Hiawatha office or you may view Arabesque tents online.
In Hiawatha's early contracts, the City agreed to set aside a portion of each year's site rent to ultimately be used for a project at Tourist Park to benefit both the Park and the Festival. That project was originally identified as a Pavilion but was termed a "mutually agreeable project" in later contracts. The set-aside was discontinued in 2001.
When additions to the set-aside fund stopped, Hiawatha and the City began a year-long discussion of the best use for that fund. That effort produced a proposal for a 7,200-square-foot, open Pavilion with nearby bathrooms and adequate parking. The final project proposed to the Commission would have cost approximately $500,000, with Hiawatha responsible for raising $34,500 in addition to the $28,000 then held in the set-aside fund.
That Pavilion will almost certainly never be built. In 2002, the Marquette City Commission voted 4-3 not to apply for the Michigan Department of Natural Resources grant that would have funded almost half the cost of a proposed Pavilion. Then, in May 2003, the only section of the Tourist Park the City would consider for a Pavilion was washed away by the flood on the Dead River system.
In 2008, Marquette actor and arts activist Gale LaJoye proposed that the city purchase an Arabesque performance tent for use by many local arts groups.
The Hiawatha board has formally declared that it would consider the purchase of this tent an acceptable use of the set-aside money - now totaling approximately $34,000 - as long as the final agreement included a period of free tent use for the Co-op (once tentatively proposed at seven years), and the purchase was supported by other user-group donations and grant money. The Marquette Arts and Culture Center received a grant to help fund the tent purchase. Overall cost of the tent and basic staging and lights would be approximately $150,000.
Thanks to all who offered money for the Pavilion project and to all who appeared at City Commission meetings, wrote letters of support and generated letters of support from other organizations. Your efforts were greatly appreciated in spite of the failure of the Pavilion proposal. We'll keep you posted about this new proposal.
Marquette's new Arabesque tent at Mattson Lower Harbor Park in August 2009. (Nikke Nason photo)
North Star gives our trailer
a great new look
A group of students at North Star Academy in Marquette volunteered to paint a festive mural on one side of the semi-trailer that Hiawatha uses for "cold storage." The group designed the colorful mural and finished painting the trailer in early June. The trailer will be parked near the second-stage dance tent during the Festival, and we hope you'll stop and view this clever piece of art.
Special thanks to North Star students, staff members, volunteers and business people who helped with the mural project: Chloe Adams, April Bibler, Nicole Bruge, Tory Christensen, Austin Gudavich, Jaqueline Hegmegee, Mimi LaFave, Timmy Landgren, Vizma Loos, Heather Lownds, Katy Martin, Corra Runion, Eric Schweppe, Graceanne Stark, Libby Nelson, Karen Anderson, Carol Phillips, Connie Joffee, Leslie Seratti, Kim Hegmegee, Dave Newman, Tom from Midway Rentals, the Hamari brothers from Marquette Wallpaper and Paint, Mike VanDamme of VanDamme Trucking, and Hiawatha board members Ron Larson and Jim Jajich, who kept the project rolling. So to speak.
For more about North Star and this project, please see the June 17, 2008, Marquette Mining Journal article.
Venue history
In 1984, the Hiawatha Festival moved from the Horsepulling Grounds in Champion, Mich., to the Tourist Park in Marquette. Changes in those 22 years have included more detailed camping rules, the end of our "discount" price for the park, and the loss of the lake and beach in the 2003 flood. Still, Tourist Park remains a pleasant venue for our Festival. Our 2006 base price for using the park was $8,838. We could pay as much as an additional $3,255 in staff costs, and we paid for a temporary campground permit from the Marquette County Health Department currently priced at $2,215 for our three-day event. As we always say, nobody loves Tourist Park like Hiawatha people. But if another site allows us to expand or improve the Festival for you, our board will certainly consider it seriously. We'll keep you posted.
