Yeah, sometimes it seems like Northfield’s favorite food is alphabet soup. But you gotta admit, it would’ve been hard to pass on that title for this post.
PAM, the Preservation Alliance of Minnesota, contacted the NDDC (the Northfield Downtown Development Corp.) a while back about hosting a tour of our historic district. I think they started with us because of our almost two-year involvement in their effort to restore the national Main Street Program to Minnesota.
At any rate, I quickly contacted long-time NDDC supporters Hayes Scriven (of the Northfield Historical Society) and Steve Edwins (of the Heritage Preservation Commission). Being the community-minded and collaboration-oriented kind of people, they joined the effort with great enthusiasm.
We developed a heck of a tour for those PAM folks. Our general theme is “Reinvesting in our Historic District to Create Economic Sustainability”. The guiding concept is to highlight private-public partnerships in recent decades, using an eight-block tour with about a dozen stops for building projects of note. We also produced a nifty map with an outline of the stops.
Northfield has been very fortunate over the past few decades to have so many citizens who have supported historic preservation with both their mouths and their money. Every year has seen projects, both small and large and both private and public, representing additional investment in our historic district.
The PAM Tour is this Saturday afternoon, starting in the St. Olaf Hospitality Tent and ending in the Northfield Historical Society. We’re looking forward to sharing our pride in our historic, scenic, and authentic downtown.