(lively music) - The Madison Mercantile is a coffee house within a larger art and innovation center.

So the Madison Mercantile kind of was born of a desire to have a space for the community to gather.

And when I moved here, I missed good coffee and I missed community and art.

So it was pretty much a selfish endeavor to build what I thought I wanted and it turned out the community needed it to.

(lively music) I graduated from Madison High School and left, joined the military, was gone for about 40 years and had settled outside of Austin, Texas.

And my husband passed away unexpectedly about five years ago and I decided I just needed to be back with my tribe.

So I moved back up here where my sister and brother and nieces and nephews and friends were and it was really a great decision.

I'm glad I'm back.

(uplifting music) I enjoyed my time in the military.

I got to live all over the United States, a couple of deployments, spent a lot of time in Germany, but I'm happy that I'm able to bring what I learned through the military to bear as we build this art and innovation center.

(gentle bright music) When I first moved back to Madison, I told my family I was just gonna buy a big old house and be that crazy old lady in Madison and just relax and not volunteer for things and just kind of live my life.

But my life of service in the military and the need to be involved and to see a problem and fix it, I think that's what really drove me to start this.

I knew that I wanted coffee and art and culture and music, and I felt like people in small towns deserve that as well.

(gentle uplifting music) So if I was missing that kind of thing in my life, I was sure that there was others in town that were as well.

So I think moving back here, having lived in bigger cities like Austin, Washington DC and things like that, I knew what was possible and I knew that we deserved it.

(gentle uplifting music) The other thing was, it was during the pandemic, and at that time, people were proving that they could move to a small town, bring their job with them and be successful.

So I think that one of the key drivers was seeing that a town such as ours could be a magnet for people who wanted to change their lives, move out of the big city, bring their jobs with them, live at maybe a little bit slower pace, but that doesn't mean your life has to be boring.

We can have culture, there's so much talent out here.

We just needed a place to showcase it.

♪ I carry mine everywhere I go ♪ ♪ Knowing where the wind ♪ The building that we eventually bought for the mercantile is 15,000 square feet, a lot bigger than we had anticipated.

So instead of just a coffee house with a art gallery, we ended up with a lot more square footage that we could fill with things that people wanted.

So, for about a year, we just said yes to everything.

Someone would come in and say, "You should have a stage."

Well, we built a stage.

"You should have a gift shop," we did that too.

(gentle uplifting music) We had a foundry in town that cast sewer covers like this and other metal items.

So these are the casting plates that the foundry used to use.

They're wooden and then they would be pressed into a mixture of sand and some other substrate, and then the metal would be cast into them.

But they're just beautiful and they were just rotting away in the building as it was falling apart.

And the owner of the building let us go in there and save as many as we could.

We got about 100 of them.

and we're gonna be using these to decorate in the coworking space, which is why we're calling that the Foundry Lounge.

The foundry closed in 2009, but prior to that, it provided sewer covers and things like this for about half of the United States.

They're just beautiful in their own right.

I think they're pieces of art themselves.

(gentle bright music) So we finally kind of came up with different lines of effort that we have, arts and culture, senior services because we are an older community predominantly, food and wellness, youth services, something we're gonna be developing.

(gentle uplifting music) Donated, everything's pretty much donated.

Blue Cross Blue Shield was closing a gym in Minneapolis and we got all of their weights and things.

It's about 80% in here, hopefully we'll get her done and be able to have some yoga.

(gentle uplifting music) Madison has been extremely supportive.

Everything from the mayor, the city manager, the city council on down to local community members.

Nothing but support.

I recently had a surprise party thrown for me, and I was so excited to see people from 94 down to three years of age from all walks of life in town, people from the Bible study group, the quilt group, other organizations that meet here that I just wouldn't have known had it not been for this experience.

Just made some really good friends.

There are people in town I believe that are here because they made friends here at the Merc and they feel like they belong to the community now.

(bright music) My favorite part of the mercantile is looking out at the crowd and seeing people sitting, talking, who wouldn't normally be together.

(bright music) I think every little town, every small town deserves a place for culture and community to grow.

And if anybody out there is thinking about doing something like this, I would just say go for it.

There are resources out there.

There's grant funding, there's support.

Your community probably needs it and will want it and will support it.

So don't hesitate.

Just find yourself a cool old building and get started.

(bright music) (bright music) - [Announcer] "Postcards" is made possible by the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund and the Citizens of Minnesota.

Additional support provided by Margaret A. Cargill Philanthropies, Mark and Margaret Yackel-Juleen on behalf of Shalom Hill Farms, a retreat and conference center in a prairie setting near Wyndham, Minnesota.

On the web at shalomhillfarm.org.

Alexandria Minnesota, a year-round destination with hundreds of lakes, trails and attractions for memorable vacations and events.

More information at explorealex.com.

The Lake Region Arts Council's Arts Calendar, an arts and cultural heritage funded digital calendar, showcasing upcoming art events and opportunities for artists in West Central Minnesota.

On the web at lrac4calendar.org.

Playing today's new music plus your favorite hits, 96.7 Kram, online at 967Kram.com.

(bright music)