It just had to happen the year we were finally getting a real winter.
Two of the Winter Carnival’s signature events – the ice-carving and snow-sculpting competitions in Rice Park – might be downsized. With just a week of fundraising remaining, carnival organizers have less than a third of the money they need for those events.
That’s bad timing, considering television crews will be setting up in Rice Park to film the U.S. Figure Skating Championships during the carnival. It seems the nation – and possibly Republican National Convention attendees – will see what kind of winter player St. Paul really is.
“All eyes are on the city,” said Kate Kelly, president of the St. Paul Festival & Heritage Foundation, which puts on the carnival.
The celebration will run from Jan. 23 to Feb. 3, with most of the events in downtown St. Paul.
Last month, as a way to boost sagging donations, the organization began selling the 300-pound blocks of ice used for the carvings in Rice Park.
They cost $122 each – in honor of the carnival’s 122nd year – and the foundation has been hoping to sell 1,000 as part of the “Stock in a Block” program.
So far, it’s sold almost 300.
So what’s to be done?
“Buy a block,” Kelly said.
If not enough people do, the show still will go on. The question is how big it will be.
Kelly said she might have to cut either the ice or snow competition, allow fewer competitors or reduce the space used.
Carnival officials blame the drop in donations on a lagging economy and recent mild winters, which have turned once-frosty ice and snow masterpieces into drippy, slippery pieces right under the carvers’ chisels.
It’s all part of the carnival’s cyclical ups and downs, said Bob Olsen, a carnival historian.
But this financial shortfall, he said, “is nibbling away at the very essence of what the carnival is about: ice and snow.”
Winter Carnival master carver Larry Fischer still sounds optimistic. Bad weather has been more harmful than low funding for the competition, and he seems to feel a good freeze coming on.
“I don’t think the competition is going to suffer much,” he said, but carvers might have to scale back the larger, more dramatic pieces.
Carving aside, Kelly said, the rest of the carnival – the activities, the parades, the pomp and circumstance – is secure.
Winter Carnival buttons “are flying off the shelves,” she said, and with luck might make up for the shortfall in ice funds.
Meanwhile, Kelly also hopes for a little more love from Mother Nature.
Freezing weather and a good dump of snow, she said, “would bring people out.”
Alex Friedrich can be reached at afriedrich@pioneerpress.com or 651-228-2109.
HOW TO BUY ‘STOCK IN A BLOCK’
Cost: $122
What you get: A “Certificate of Ownership” and a chance to walk in a carnival parade. Also, $5 from each sale goes to the Dorothy Day Center in St. Paul to provide warm meals for people in need.
For more information or to buy a block online: winter-carnival.com
Copyright 2008 Pioneer Press.
