Howie Blog: Duluth~Superior Magazine wins prestigious Minnesota publishing award

November 19, 2009 by Howie · Leave a Comment

. Duluth~Superior Magazine was a winner at the recent Minnesota Magazine & Publications Association 13th annual Minnesota Publishing Excellence Awards. Read more.

. Mark Dayton, DFL candidate for Governor of Minnesota in 2010, posted this on his Facebook page (2,489 friends) moments ago: “The number of out-of-work Minnesotans increased by over 7,000 people during the past month. Currently, 223,000 of our fellow citizens are unemployed. Over 100,000 of them have lost their jobs during the last year. Clearly, an already desperate situation continues to get even worse, causing more hardship for Minnesotans, their friends and neighbors.”

. Click here to be a fan of Duluth Public Schools on Facebook.

. Scott Vesterstein (left), Executive Vice President of Fitger’s, sent this e-mail to Duluth Mayor Don Ness and City Councilors today: “I am writing in response to the article ‘Bad rap dogs Bentleyville’ featured in the Tuesday, November 17th Duluth News Tribune. I very much appreciate the Mayor’s and Councilor’s efforts to keep spending down and not raise taxes. However, in this instance, I believe the economic impact that Bentleyville will create for restaurants, shops and hotels, which in turn generates tax revenues, far outweighs the monies contributed by the City in the form of electricity costs, lost parking ramp revenue and increased police presence in the Canal Park area.

I have visited Bentleyville three times in the past with my family and each visit was a wonderful experience. I volunteered this year to help construct Bentleyville and have witnessed firsthand how much work Nathan Bentley and all the volunteers put forth to make such a wonderful event happen. At Fitger’s, we have embraced Bentleyville by including train rides from Fitger’s and offering free parking for anyone attending Bentleyville. We have already seen the economic impact in the form of room reservations and anticipate additional traffic which will benefit the restaurants and retail stores.

We are very fortunate to have Bentleyville locate in the Bayfront Festival Park and I commend Nathan Bentley on his charitable spirit and what he does out of the goodness of his heart for all people. I hope the City of Duluth does all it can to make this an annual event.”

Ness’ response to Vesterstein and councilors: “Very well said. I think it is a travesty that some in our community are attacking Bentleyville. Not only is this going to pull the city together with a great family-friendly event, but it is going to be a tremendous benefit to the downtown and the retailers and restaurants. I am proud of the City’s role as a partner to Bentleyville at Bayfront and I will not apologize for our efforts to support this event.

Keep in mind, Nathan Bentley did not approach the city looking for assistance, I sought out Nathan to see if he would be willing to make this happen. After facing serious budget and staffing cuts last year, I had to eliminate the city light display at Bayfront. At the same time Nathan Bentley had announced he was going to take a year off. I brought Nathan to the office and pitched the idea of moving Bentleyville to Bayfront Park — not only did he agree, but he has gone well beyond any expectations we had.

Nathan and his crew deserve to be thanked for their tremendous GIFT to our city. The complaints and the naysayers should be drown out by a chorus of Duluthians and visitors who see this as a tremendous success story. Some folks will complain about anything — the fact that they are complaining about Bentleyville only confirms that fact.

Let me also address the issue of city financial contributions to the event. We anticipate spending less than $5000 for electricity and those funds will come from the tourism tax fund. There were about $25,000 in electrical upgrades made by city staff — those improvements will come from the Bayfront Park Capital Improvement Fund, revenue from that fund comes from park user fees. Other events will benefit greatly from that electric system upgrade. The City is partnering with other private ramp owners to provide free parking in the downtown after 5:30 — I’m not going to apologize for that decision either because of the benefit to downtown business owners.

There are so many other contributions by others who are working to make this a great success. I think what Fitgers is doing with the train is just wonderful.

Thank you Nathan Bentley! Thank you volunteers! Thank you to everyone who is committed to making this a historic success!”

. WDSE-Channel 8 will air a feature story on the Clelia II and Great Lakes passenger cruise ships today during their 8 p.m. broadcast, and repeated Sunday at 10 a.m., according to Gene Shaw of Visit Duluth.

– Homegrown journalist Hanson has committed a 30-plus year local career promoting positive news, information and sports in the Northland. Today, he works full-time at the Howie Blog, a local breaking news and sports site dubbed as Duluth’s Finest News Source. The community breaking news and sports site is updated several times daily seven days a week — and is a companion online publication of this Facebook site (2,601 friends) and the wildly-read Howie Blog direct e-mail blast, published weekdays (over 2,640 current subscribers). Readers need not register to read the all-local content at the HowieBlog.com, and archives will forever remain free outside of a paywall. The Howie Blog’s simple mission is to build community, online.