Wisconsin Hometown Stories

In the decades after World War II, Eau Claire's vibrant downtown steadily declined, as shoppers were drawn to new developments, like the London Square Mall of the 1970s. It seemed like such a big deal at the time. It was a high concept mall. Had a fountain in it. It had a little scale model of Big Ben. It had a record store and they had a bookstore. And you didn't have to go outside in the winter to go between these various shops. Which really led to the decline of the downtown. That, that really hurt. In the late 1970s, a group of downtown leaders met to come up with new ideas,

as they faced a new threat

a much bigger mall to be built on the outskirts of town. Based on the suggestions of local citizens, the group developed a survey for the general public and local business owners. The results of the survey were devastating. Good evening. Downtown Eau Claire is facing serious problems, and business leaders were made painfully aware of them today. The message from the Eau Claire consumer is clear. Downtown Eau Claire needs plenty of improvement before he'll shop there more often. The survey lists consumer reasons for not shopping downtown and parking was on top of the list.

marching band plays, cheers and applause

as they faced a new threat

Balloons went up, confetti came down, and the North High School Band marched to the festive opening of Oakwood. Before the ribbon was cut... In 1986, the Oakwood Mall opened its doors, and downtown business owners found it even harder to compete. And five years later, adding to the woes of the historic downtown area, came a shocking announcement. I regret to inform you that the company announced today its plans to close the Eau Claire tire plant. The closing of Uniroyal / Goodrich, Eau Claire largest employer, would displace 1,350 workers, and end its $43 million payroll. In my position, I have to go up there and try and tell the people that there is a tomorrow. We're going to get up in the morning. And, uh...

purses lips

as they faced a new threat

The downtown area was deserted. Bleak. Mm-hmm. Yeah. It was bleak. People threw their hands up. They didn't want downtown to die, but they didn't really know what the answer was. One answer came about with the renovation of the old State Movie Theater. And it was in the 1990s. I was part of the effort. I don't think these are from roof leaks. To revitalize that building because we had created an Arts Council. We were looking for a performance venue. It was vital in helping to generate the increased interest in arts that we now have together with having the University of Wisconsin- Eau Claire, which has a strong theater and a strong music department. The UW-Eau Claire music department began a jazz studies program in the mid-1960s. And then in 1968, Dominic Spera came

trumpet solo

as they faced a new threat

and he was a professional trumpet player from New York. And holy mackerel! Things just went crazy after that. He turned them from a pretty good college band into a nationally-recognized jazz ensemble. They had tremendous need to win and prove themselves. In addition, I should mention The Joynt, which is a bar on Water Street and the owner, Bill Nolte, would hire traveling musicians. It was very exciting. We thought if we could do these shows and just break even, not try to make any money-- only we never broke even, ever.

chuckles

as they faced a new threat

So for whatever, from '74 to '91 I spent about every dime this place took in on music. And so Dizzy Gillespie played here and Charles Mingus played here. And that's Phil Woods and that's Gerry Mulligan, Freddie Hubbard, Ernie Watts, Bobby Hutcherson, Thad Jones, Mel Lewis, Jack McDuff and then Dave Holland, and Sam Rivers and Ndugu, Sheila Jordan, McCoy Tyner. And my students would just go crazy because they get to hear all these big-time people right in Eau Claire and that affected a lot of our progress. It really was a positive thing. The study of jazz-- combining the intense discipline of Classical music with the jazz form, and adding the art of spontaneous creation, or improvisation-- resulted in many remarkable benefits for the city. A lot of our students then taught in local schools. As the jazz program filtered down into Eau Claire high schools, Justin Vernon and some of his jazz band-mates decided to start their own band called Mount Vernon. Vernon would eventually bring acclaim to Eau Claire, becoming the leader of the highly successful band, Bon Iver. A few years later, Zach Halmstad, who studied jazz piano at UW-Eau Claire, created a software company called Jamf to help organizations manage their Apple computers. He eventually set up shop in a storefront in downtown Eau Claire, and as the use of Apple products grew, so did Jamf. And as city leaders attempted once again to revive the downtown, they set their sights on Eau Claire's point of origin-- the confluence of the two rivers. But the place where they hoped to build a park suffered from decades of industrial use. Abandoned buildings and heavily-contaminated soil made development difficult and expensive. So the initial attempts were to just cap it to protect our citizens. And then, as we started looking at the future of downtown and what we could do to make it better, we started realizing that taking advantage of those two rivers might make sense. So at that point, we started investing in amenities like bike trails and parks and things like that. Throughout Eau Claire, we have just an amazing network of trails that run along the rivers throughout this community but that's due to really a couple of decade's worth of investment. But where they really become the most beautiful is when they are downtown. And so you see a growing number of trail segments being developed and new rail bridges being converted high, high above the Chippewa or the Eau Claire Rivers. A big break came when the Royal Credit Union decided to build a new headquarters building at the confluence, bringing in new tax dollars, and providing a reason to build Phoenix Park. We decided that we had to move forward. We had to try and do something that would attract new development back there. So, investing in that infrastructure was the key to doing that. As we were building the park, we also partnered with the local farmer's market and they went and built a beautiful pavilion that we have thousands and thousands of people come downtown. So it was really infrastructure that generated people gathering and just is the focal point of downtown right now that people have adopted and feel so proud of. -

singing

as they faced a new threat

Oh, oh In addition to attracting the development of new housing across from the park, Jamf software built a new building for over 200 employees. The success in developing one side of the Eau Claire River led to a movement to build a performing arts center on the other. After a contentious debate, city and county voters passed referenda to fund the construction. This has been a matter of great debate, largely over who should fund it, but I think symbolically this is creating a new, almost-unknown Eau Claire at the juncture of the two rivers. That project helped catapult a number of other investments in downtown and it gave people the confidence that we were indeed, yes, moving very strongly in a new direction. Eau Claire's growing identity as a music and arts destination rose to new heights when Bon Iver took home two Grammy awards in 2012. And then, when you have somebody who's also so interested in continuing to support his community by putting effort into things and staying here and building a studio here and making this kind of a known destination. And then most importantly perhaps, is leveraging that success into the creating the Eau Claire Music Festival which immediately propelled us to just international awareness over the Eau Claire community in that it had this amazing festival here. The creativity and the collaborative nature of that festival, it just makes it a very interesting festival to cover for national music media and mainstream media as well. And so that story of Eau Claire and the "new Eau Claire" is starting to be told in some really exciting ways. And so it really has changed the economy here in some pretty drastic ways. We're seeing people moving in to be able to be part of that art scene and part of that music scene, to have their opportunity. We're compared to a young Austin where you can still get in and have an audience. Eau Claire went through three stages in its history reflected in the physical appearance of what we call 'the confluence.' I think that today the new development of the facilities in downtown Eau Claire in which the college, as well as the city and government and private initiative, have all contributed is remaking Eau Claire.