Sep. 7—MITCHELL — After years of stability, the location of the Corn Palace Festival carnival is up for discussion again for 2025.
The Corn Palace Entertainment Board discussed a potential move during its regular meeting on Tuesday, Sept. 3, 2024.
Board member Jory Hansen said he had heard a lot of “continued conversation for moving it back to the way it was.” Mayor Jordan Hanson piggy-backed on that sentiment, claiming he had numerous polls on his social media pages and “that 90% of people wanted it the old way.”
The festival has been located between Fifth and Ninth avenues on Main Street since 2019. Previously, the festival stretched from First to Seventh avenues, with the carnival rides lining Main Street between the downtown businesses.
Mitchell City Administrator Stephanie Ellwein recalled the discussion from five years ago about moving the carnival. She said Main Street businesses in the First-through-Fifth area wanted the rides moved because they lost access to their storefronts for nearly a full week.
“We also wanted it moved to allow for bigger rides, which was hard to do because of the narrowness of the streets,” Ellwein told the board. “They were looking to add more rides, although I don’t know if we have more rides than we used to. Some of the businesses that were on Main Street aren’t there anymore, so there might be different results if they were surveyed now.”
A number of the key constituencies for the festival prefer the carnival in its current location, Corn Palace Director Doug Greenway said. Gold Star Amusements, the festival’s carnival provider, has preferred the Fifth-to-Ninth alignment because it’s led to better sales with the rides closer together, there’s less vandalism and it’s difficult to position the rides between First and Fifth without blocking business storefronts.
Mitchell public safety officials also prefer the current location, Greenway said, because there’s a small area to respond to in an emergency and the previous alignment had fire lane concerns when the rides and vendors were along Main Street.
In 2024, the Gold Star rides were located on Seventh Avenue between Main Street and Lawler Street, Main Street between Seventh Avenue and Ninth Avenue and in four parking lots in that two-block area. Greenway said based on his conversations with Gold Star officials, there’s no guarantee they would return to the festival if Mitchell changes the amusement locations back.
“The carnival itself is in a two-block area, it’s very compact,” Greenway said. “They were overwhelmingly in favor of leaving it.”
For the 2024 festival, Gold Star reported a five-year high in revenue for amusement ticket sales during the festival but that also came after an increase in prices for Passports to Fun vouchers, which can be redeemed for unlimited ride wristbands.
Greenway also pointed out there have been electric power upgrades made in that area of Main Street that have made connections easier for Gold Star. Greenway said from the Corn Palace’s perspective, he likes the current alignment because it makes the historic venue the geographic center of the festival.
Gold Star, which is based in Faribault, Minnesota, and the Corn Palace board, approved a new five-year contract in June. The carnival location is expected to be discussed additionally at the board’s next meeting on Oct. 1 at City Hall.
The 2025 festival will be held Aug. 20-24.
The Corn Palace board approved “250 Years of America” as the tentative theme for the 2026 Corn Palace murals. That will coincide with the United States’ 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence in 1776, with a large slate of festivities scheduled nationwide ahead of the anniversary on July 4, 2026.
The board approved the 2026 theme earlier than last year, in part to give the Dakota Wesleyan University design students more time to work up mural ideas. On the traditional timeline, students would work on the murals for the rest of the fall semester and the designs approved and announced in the spring.
The 2025 mural theme is “Wonders of the World.” Greenway said corn is expected to arrive next month for those murals and will start to be built this fall. The mural designs will depict the Christ the Redeemer statue in Brazil, Rome Colosseum, Taj Mahal, Great Wall of China, Sydney Opera House, Egyptian pyramids, Grand Canyon, Eiffel Tower and Statue of Liberty.
Source Agencies
