♪ ♪
- 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]
- 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]
- 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]
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]
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] ♪ 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.