FINALLY, ARTSPACE IS COMING Six years in the making, Artspace will finally hold a ground-breaking ceremony later this month. Construction on the long-awaited project, which will construct a building containing 34 live/work units for artists, will begin in October. It's been a long process for the $9 million project, which has secured funding from a wide variety of sources, including the city of Minot. The new building will sit at the corner of Main Street and Central Avenue, where the former Leland Parker Hotel once stood. Besides the live/work spaces, the four-story building will house a community room and commercial space such as frame shops and galleries. We're happy the project is finally to the construction stage. Artspace will be an outstanding addition to the downtown Minot landscape.
STARS OF HOPE This past week's Stars of Hope events held in Minot were well-received and well-attended. People enjoyed their opportunity to paint wooden stars with messages of hope and unity that will later be set up around the city. Students at Longfellow Elementary also participated in the event by painting stars. In the bigger picture, the event brought together residents from cities around the country, communities that were also hit by natural disasters. A group of residents from Joplin, Mo., attended Minot's events, after a group from Minot attended a similar event in Joplin earlier this year. The week's events provided another example of what can be accomplished when people work together, sharing their experiences in an effort to help one another cope with tragedy.
THANKFULLY, THE CONVENTIONS ARE OVER Perhaps someone enjoys hours of political bluster, but we're certainly glad the national conventions are over for Republican and Democrats. Whew. We're not sure we could take much more talk from both parties about unity, all the while relentlessly bashing the other party's candidate. We realize the conventions are part of the process, but we'd rather see one-day conventions, with the parties putting the millions they would save toward better uses. And that doesn't mean more negative ads. We hope the next two months of campaigning are more constructive and useful to the American people than the last two weeks of conventions have been.