Minneapolis might be witnessing the end of not just one, but two major events going back decades in the city.
According to the Minneapolis Downtown Council, they will no longer produce two signature events, the Holidazzle and the Aquatennial. The Downtown Council is the most recent organizer of both of those and it leaves the future of both in doubt.
Producing both meant relying on sponsorship dollars, which Downtown Council says is not a viable way to continue, and the city has other, more important issues to tackle, and operating these signature events is just like any business subject to financial fluctuations.
"Some years they net you resources, some years they cost you," explains Adam Duinkinck, President and CEO of Downtown Council and the Downtown Improvement District. "And you have to dig into reserves to help pay for them. But it's that in combination with the strategic imperative of what does downtown need right now? For us it means focus on safety, focus on advocacy of the of the businesses and the economic development picture of downtown."
Duininck says the Aquatennial and Holidazzle events have evolved quite a bit over the past few decades and it doesn't make the best sense for the Downtown Council to be running them anymore. He says they hope to transfer planning and operations to other groups soon, but that is very uncertain despite the city saying they would help with any transitions.
Duininck says they are already working on some holiday plans related to Holidazzle and said they don't intend for either event to "go away."
"We're still gonna be active in this space," he told WCCO. "We still wanna be partnering with other people that are gonna make it vibrant and active downtown. In fact, I think we have some really cool ideas to take what worked in last year's Holidazzle and continue them going forward. But what we are also trying to do is try to find people that will be interested in taking over these events and producing them from a from a self-sponsorship standpoint, from a standpoint of running the events."
The Holidazzle dates back to the early-1990's as a way to attract shoppers to downtown Minneapolis. It was long-held as a parade, lit up at night along Nicollet Mall, but evolved several times over the years. The parades stopped over a decade ago, and a winter festival popped up in its place with stops at Peavey Plaza and Loring Park before the 2024 festival that transformed Nicollet Mall into a winter playground with twinkling lights, colorful shows, local food trucks, holiday shopping pop-ups and more.
With very little retail left in downtown Minneapolis - long gone are the days of Dayton's - the Holidazzle tried to bring in pop-up opportunities and attract people to restaurants and bars.
"That's not a reason to have Holidazzle today, and so the event has evolved and grown a lot," Duininck adds.
Aquatennial is more complicated, with the festival dating back to 1940, driven by local businessman who were attempting to unite the city behind a civic celebration. It was a massive success for decades, with huge turnouts for the parades, water-themed sports and activities, and the iconic Queen of the Lakes.
But in the late-1990s, with the festival slowly withering away, the organization split into two groups, with the Aquatennial Ambassador Organization taking on the Queen of the Lakes and that candidate program along with the festival's outreach to community festivals around the state and country. Downtown Council took over the event side of the festival with the parades, milk carton boat races, the fireworks show and more.
The "10 Best Days of Summer" eventually ran into more issues. That came with a shortening of the festival, the canceling of events like the milk carton races, and by 2025 it was a four-day festival built around two signature events, the Torchlight Parade (which was canceled by weather this July), and a Saturday night fireworks show. There were a handful of other activities across the city as well, but a far cry from the nearly two-week long celebration of the City of Lakes.
"In some way with these events because they're happening downtown and we want events to happen downtown, but when you also step back and think about it, there are hundreds of events and festivals that happen downtown that we don't produce," says Duininck. "That other people produce, and that we help support. That's how I would look at doing Aquatennial, and how in the future. Or some sort of holiday downtown event celebration."