Stillwater group that revived Lumberjack Days stepping down

Mary Divine, Pioneer Press
Updated ·4 min read
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The group of volunteers who revived Lumberjack Days and produced eight summer festivals in downtown Stillwater over the past 10 years are stepping down, and city officials are working on a plan for a new entity to take over the event.

The members of The Locals told city officials last year that they would not be renewing or accepting an extension of the group’s contract with the city. “We felt the time was right to have another organization take the reins, and as a group of local residents, we’ve achieved our goal of rebuilding Stillwater’s signature hometown event,” they wrote in a Facebook post over the weekend.

The Locals were dedicated to keeping Lumberjack Days “local, free and community-focused,” they wrote.

Mayor Ted Kozlowski said the city owes The Locals a “huge debt of gratitude for resurrecting Lumberjack Days and making it such a great community-focused event. Thank you to all of the volunteers that made this event what it’s become, and I’m excited for the future.”

Local business owners Brian Asmus, of Brian’s Bar, and Chris Diebold, of The Crosby Hotel, are in talks with the city to take over the popular summer festival, Kozlowski said.

No contract has been signed, but City Administrator Joe Kohlmann said Monday that staff hope to have a contract for the council to review at a meeting in the next few weeks.

“The format is largely going to follow what we have seen in the past – downhill derby, parade, concerts, lumberjack demonstrations,” he said. “I don’t think it’s going to stray too far from what we would expect previously. It’s just figuring out, how do we keep the things the locals want and what draws people on the tourism front?”

Neither Asmus nor Diebold could be reached for comment.

Revived after money problems

The Stillwater City Council canceled its contract with the previous festival producer, St. Croix Events, after Lumberjack Days 2011. The company’s owner, David Eckberg, was later sentenced to probation, a fine and community service for writing bad checks to festival vendors. Investigators said he owed distributors and business partners more than $54,000.

The Locals revived the summer festival in 2014 after a two-year hiatus. The new nonprofit organization changed the festival’s name to Stillwater Log Jam for two years. In 2016, it went back to Lumberjack Days after the city received the rights to the name and logo — the image of a lumberjack riding on a log and holding a peavey hook — from the Lumberjack Days Festival Association. Eckberg agreed to cooperate in getting the association’s board of directors to sign over the rights to the city as part of a plea agreement in his tax-evasion case.

No Lumberjack Days festivals were held in 2020 or 2021 because of COVID.

The current board of the Local includes Sam Ziemer, Brad Glynn, Josh Ernst, Paul Creager, Sarah Moslemi and Chris Foster.

“We wanted Lumberjack Days to be like a big small-town event — quaint in an intentional way with a welcoming and small-town feel and family oriented, community-oriented event,” Creager said. “That sums up our approach, and we feel like we accomplished that goal.”

Creager, who helped organize music and the skate ramp, said one of his favorite Lumberjack Days was in 2018 when the Jayhawks and Stillwater native Frankie Lee were the headliners. “That was a powerful one because it was a hometown artist who is internationally known and my mom loves the Jayhawks,” Creager said. “It kind of had everything.”

The 2022 festival, which featured Yam Haus, also ranks right up there, he said. “I met the musician at a garage sale in Stillwater, and they ended up having our biggest crowd,” he said. “For me, that’s the combination of the extreme local and the broad relevance. We have a lot of talent right in our town that the event showcases – and that brings people together like a big small-town event.”

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The Locals group was founded after concerns were raised that a larger out-of-town festival company would take over Lumberjack Days. Mid-America Festivals, which owns and operates the Minnesota Renaissance Festival, for example, had expressed interest, said Glynn, co-founder and vice president of marketing for Lift Bridge Brewing Co.

The group was worried that Lumberjack Days “would be fenced and ticketed and not reflective of the history of the event and the family friendly nature we wanted to go with,” he said.

“We felt pretty strongly that it should be a community-based event with family friendly and budget-friendly activities and entertainment, so we featured local and Minnesota artists,” Glynn said. “We always had free music. That was one of our goals each year was to have free music – not ticketed, not fenced-in, and really reflect the local culture. We feel like we accomplished that goal, and we did a lot of great things and had a lot of great experiences along the way.”