By Emily Kurash Casey,
Director of Community Programs
Here at Rethos we love sharing stories of people breathing new life into old places. Those people can be found everywhere, from the venues we tour during Doors Open Minneapolis, to the upper floor housing being instituted in our Main Street districts. It’s easy to lean into the “grand” when we think about rehab projects.
Madison Mercantile is a place I’ve been hearing about for a while. I first met Kristine Shelstad, CEO (Chief Energizing Officer) of Madison Mercantile, at the Connecting Entrepreneurial Communities Conference; and the energy coming out of Madison is palpable. I had been hearing buzz about Madison Mercantile from community development colleagues and nonprofit organizations working around the state. In early June, I finally got the chance to visit Madison, the Mercantile, and downtown..
Madison (population 1,500), is located in Lac qui Parle county in west central Minnesota. Driving in on Highway 40, I was welcomed by Lou (their lutefisk cartoon mascot) and a lot of Sun Drop signs (Madison has a long history of distributing the beloved soda). Pulling up to Madison Mercantile with its enormous coffee cup out front, the building is flanked by a grain elevator, evidence of the strong agricultural community. It is apparent that the building was something else before—a former lumber yard and hardware store, located at the end of Main Street—a space that big can seem daunting.
Neither the size of the space or the renovations needed seemed to intimidate Shelstad, who officially opened the Madison Mercantile in February 2022.
Madison Mercantile is home to, well, A LOT. Luckily for me, the coffee shop is front and center. After ordering my Americano I was treated to a new recipe of roasted walnuts. A slow loop around the massive room will take you to places you wouldn’t expect to find in one big space in rural Minnesota. From the coffee shop you’ll move to an area furnished with a hodge podge of acquired tables and chairs that make it feel warm and welcoming. Like most cafes, the Madison Mercantile Coffee House isn’t just for coffee connoisseurs. Folks working solo, those gathering for meetings, and casual conversationalists alike all gather at the Mercantile. Behind the tables is a stage set with a full band, ready for rehearsals and performances. Walls were adorned with displays from local artists. There was even a jewelry tree set up for kids in search of Mother’s Day gifts.
The front room is great and welcoming, but I’ve barely skimmed the surface of all that happens in Madison Mercantile. The people are truly the heartbeat of this place. In the back of the room are doorways to a smaller meeting room where I met Bernice getting ready for book club. A small writing room named for Robert Bly and Carol Bly is set up for folks needing a quiet space to do their own writing for work or leisure. There’s a gathering space called Gary-Dale, named for the four Garys who did the work to build out the room, and used for card clubs and regular gatherings of lifetime locals. In fact, during my visit Kristine answered a phone call from one of the regulars asking her to let their card buddies know they’d be missing that afternoon. I walked into the Extra Big bathroom, built out to accommodate a regular who uses an electric wheelchair, with funds from the Christopher & Dana Reeve Foundation. There’s never a question about how the rooms were built or their purpose. Simple signs share information about special funding, along with the people who’ve made these rooms their projects, like Gary-Dale and the Extra Big bathroom, to the Innovation Center, sponsored by the Blandin Foundation and Madison Economic Development Authority along with the City of Madison. The Innovation Center is teched out and ready for entrepreneurs, small businesses seeking support, and general help with things like grants or other economic development initiatives. In fact, the Mercantile recently lost a physical training entrepreneur that had been operating in the back room for the best reason possible: expansion to their own space across the street. “This underscores the importance of a place like the Mercantile where businesses can get their start with low overhead expenses. We want to have a space for the people who live here all the time, to make Madison a better place for everyone” Kristine shared. “We didn’t have a goal to change anything.”
Madison Mercantile has become a place for everyone. You can pick up yard signs for local elections, for either party. Residents who need mobility equipment can check out pieces from a room with walkers, wheelchairs, and other mobility aids. Groups that had similar interests but were operating separately, and likely never knew others existed, are now working together on initiatives from environmental efforts to Bible and book clubs to art collaborations. There is a plant room and small raised outdoor beds ready for gardening. Work is happening to build a future food hub and cold storage space. Folks living in Madison only for the summer can rent out an office. The Class of 1954 even held their recent reunion at Madison Mercantile! Truly, anything can happen there.
For a massive building that needed a lot of work, it’s a shining example of what can be possible in a small town. Kristine has approached the building incrementally and tactfully to wrangle grants and sponsored funds into focused buildouts while being attentive to community needs. There’s more work to be done, and little by little, a space is being curated by the community. It’s become a beautiful space, but it’s not being treated with kid gloves. Folks work with what they have on hand, share what they’ve got, and when more resources become available, more is added. The buildout to create the food hub and cold storage is a great example of planning, preparing, and tackling a new feature after the first steps have happened. Kristine’s excitement and love of the space is apparent—she’s got hopes and dreams for what can happen, of course, but she’s holding the reins loosely. Madison is making it clear that they’ll step up to build a space they need together.
If you step outside and walk a few blocks to the other end of Main Street in Madison, you’ll find the Grand Theater and Grand Park. Established in 2022, Grand Park is a beautiful green space filled with color, giant musical instruments, murals, and outdoor exercise equipment for everyone to enjoy. As the park sits immediately next to the Historic Grand Theater, Madison folks saw a chance to solve two problems simultaneously. The theater needed accessible bathrooms. The park needed accessible bathrooms. By building indoor bathrooms that could be accessed through an exterior door to the park, and an interior door to the theater, both places got what they needed. Madison residents took what could have been a really tricky problem and solved it in a very practical way.
Madison’s downtown is a mix of beautifully occupied spaces and vacant storefronts. It’s still home to a hardware store and pharmacy, and the grocery store is one block off Main Street. They’ve seen disinvestment and change in their community, but I was so inspired by the true spirit of community throughout town. Madison Mercantile is a place that towns dream about—a true community space for business, multi-generational gathering, and celebration of local life. In all my travels in Minnesota, I’d be hard pressed to come up with another example of an incrementally rehabilitated building that houses business incubator space, mental health resources, fitness studios, community clubs, multigenerational connections, and space for people to dream of what could be.
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