A new space in Walnut Grove

Work & Gather offers professional work space and gathering area — for business, or plesaure

There was a time — make that multiple times — when Beth Bjorklund and her Walnut Grove EDA cohorts — might have thought they had bitten off more than they can chew as they were working day after day to transform a vacant downtown building into a new enterprise in town.

“There were a lot of times when we were like,’ What are we doing? Why would we think this is a good idea?’” joked Bjorklund, Walnut Grove EDA secretary. “It was literally blood, sweat and tears. There would be days we would love it, then there would be days where it’s like, ‘the roof is leaking again’ and I was literally crying.”

The EDA’s goal was to not only salvage and transform an empty property into a small-town asset, but to provide people with a place to gather, do business or just celebrate.

So was born Work & Gather, a new entity in downtown Walnut Grove that celebrated an open house last Wednesday inside a new-look building that most recently was home to Sewn Edge, which was put up for sale in 2024.

The EDA was awarded a $45,000 Small Communities and Rural Placemaking grant from the Blandin Foundation to purchase and renovate the building, which was once home to a bar.

“We weren’t sure quite what we wanted to do with (the money),” EDA President Alex Johnson said. “They talked about creating community space, and we thought about making offices. That helped shape what we wanted to do with this place.”

The sale was made official in July 2024. That, as it turns out, was the easy part. One of the agreements with the grant was that the EDA would take on demolition and construction duties.

“To save our funds, we thought that we would do all the demo ourselves,” said Bjorklund. “We thought it was going to be, like, 80 to 100 hours total as a group.”

“We lost track after about 100 hours,” Johnson laughed. “This place has been here long enough, there were so many quirky things.”

The labor took a bit longer than expected. Bjorklund said the plan was to have everything ready by last April, at least that’s what the EDA told the Bladin group.

“We’re about a year late, but Blandin was awesome to work with on that, too,” said Bjorklund. “They were very understanding, especially with the roof.

Jarett Herder, vice-president of the EDA, said the amount of hours the group put in has paid off in a big way.

“It definitely would not have happened if we didn’t all put in lots of hours,” Herder said. If we would’ve had to pay contractors to do all the demo …” The place, to which Johnson referred, was most recently home to Sewn Edge. Longtime Walnut Grove residents can maybe recall when it was the downtown bar.

Visitors to Work & Gather are welcomed by a spacious meeting room. A hallway on the south end leads to a bathroom and three offices, each carrying a name intimately tied to the town: Lafayette Beadle, the town’s first postmaster; Laura Ingalls Wilder; and Medal of Honor recipient Leo Thorsness, who died in 1993. On the wall outside of each office is a sign with a photo of each, along with a detailed biography of the iconic figures.

“There are lot of cool people that are from Walnut Grove,” said Bjorklund. “We got some of the history of those people; our runner-up was Ida Anderson, and we hung her stuff up in the kitchen — she was a Red Cross nurse during the war. Dan Peterson helped a lot with that.”

Herder said that bringing the building back to life also helps the town avoid either being home to another vacant building, or losing it altogether.

The buildings on the south side of Main St. are all tied together foundationally and most share common walls, so the cost of tearing down a structure would be tough for the City to swallow.

“No one was using this space, and when it sits empty too long and they don’t pay their taxes, it ends up going to the City, and they might ask, ‘What’s it going to cost to tear this thing down?’” Does the City just want to let a building go to waste, and if you tear it down, there’s going to be an expense, or do something with it?”

Besides the Blandin grant, the EDA also used money from the former Walnut Grove Development Corporation that disbanded years ago.

“That money was sitting in an account, but we were restricted on what we could use it on because it came from the development corporation,” Bjorklund said. “It’s just always been sitting there, so it was like, what better way to use ii?”

Work & Gather is a public co-working space built for professionals, entrepreneurs and community members that is meant to offer a welcoming area for people to focus, collaborate and connect. It offers three private offices, a large-group workspace and kitchenette. Daily rentals are available, as are more long-term options.

“I want people to have resources to see people like attorneys, or to have Southwest Health & Human Services come down,” Bjorklund said. “We have so many people in town that need access to these resources who don’t have a way to get to Marshall or Redwood Falls.”

The daily rental rate for an office is $25. “We’re working with (the Redwood County EDA) on setting up an entrepreneur workshoptype thing to educate people on how to start a business, how to do a business plan,” Bjorklund said. “We can do meetings and seminars here.”

Smaller gatherings like birthday parties and other get-togethers can be held at W&G as well, and there have already been affairs booked. And it’s no coincidence the initials of the building coincide with the town in which it is located.

“I was scrolling names on Google, and I saw that and thought, ‘You know, that works,” Bjorklund said. “I’m like, ‘Let’s lean into the WG.”

Bjorklund said she was able to keep all the construction the EDA members weren’t able to take care of local. The main contractor was Trent Baker Construction. Also working with the project was Dave’s Drywall, G&H Plumbing & Heating, G&R Electric, Anderson Electric and Flooring Concepts.