Why do you put so much time and effort into the community of Bismarck? “Someone has to do it. There’s potential here, and you want to support the people who also see that potential. They’re really going to be what pushes Bismarck into the next hundred years. For me, it’s a calling in a weird way.”
Kate Herzog Chief Operating Officer | the Downtowners
What do you want your legacy to be on Bismarck?
What do the Downtowners do that isn’t obvious to the public?
“So what do I want my statue to look like? Like
“Generally our day-to-day work is really helping grow small businesses and helping our larger businesses find employees and create a sense of place where they can recruit talent. We also look at the downtown from a big market aspect and say what are we missing, what do we need, where are the gaps? Housing has been a huge part of what we’ve been working on the past five or so years, and we’ve got a 50% increase in our housing coming into the downtown which just changes the whole neighborhood. When you have a residence now with businesses, not only does that help the businesses, but it creates an 18 hour, seven days a week downtown. That’s really our goal.”
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BISMARCK MAGAZINE | MARCH-APRIL 2022
a Mary Tyler Moore. We always say, we just want it to get done, we don’t really care who gets the credit for it. So, I kind of feel like if I left today, my legacy would continue downtown because of the foundation that everyone has put together to get it rolling again. I just wanted to see a neighborhood that’s self-sustaining. If you have residents and you have good businesses, that all just feeds on itself and it will keep itself moving.”
How many years have you been doing this? “12 years. I started right out of college. I actually lived in downtown Grand Forks, above a bar in a 120-year-old building. We would walk to bars and do all that stuff. In North Dakota, there isn’t much walkability, so it was a good experience for me. When I came back here, I knew what it was