“This move by our organization, we think, is going to help position us for strength in the long run,” Duininck said. “We don’t think that it’s going to result in less activity downtown.”
Downtown Minneapolis businesses launched Holidazzle in 1992 to compete for holiday shoppers with the Mall of America, which had just opened in Bloomington. Organizers spent more than $1 million on marketing efforts that yielded the Disney-inspired light-up floats that paraded down Nicollet Mall for more than two decades.
The event evolved through the years. The parade stopped in 2013, when organizers refashioned Holidazzle as a winter festival that had a one-year stint at Peavey Plaza before several years in Loring Park.
The pandemic canceled Holidazzle in 2020. A lack of funding halted it again in 2023. Last year, the event returned to Nicollet Mall in hopes of drawing more than 100,000 visitors to the central business district through a four-day span, but only 65,000 showed up, according to Downtown Council estimates.
Aquatennial’s origins go back much further. The water-themed summer festival, billed as the official civic celebration of Minneapolis, emerged in 1940, allegedly as part of local business leaders’ plans to unite the city in the wake of the bloody 1934 Teamsters strike.
Through the years, the event has included a beauty contest, a torchlight parade, milk carton boat races and a fireworks show. The Downtown Council took control of the event from the nonprofit Aquatennial Association in 2002 after fiscal pressures threatened its future. In 2015, the council cut festivities down from two weeks to four days.