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Why the Great Plains Are Great Once Again
On a drizzly, warm June night, the bars, galleries, and restaurants along Broadway are packed with young revelers. Traffic moves slowly, as drivers look for parking. The bar at the Donaldson, a boutique hotel, is so packed with stylish patrons that I can’t get a drink. My friend, a local, and I head over to Monte’s, a trendy Italian place down the street. We watch a group of attractive 30-something blondes share a table and gossip. They look like the cast of the latest Housewives series.
It might sound like an evening in the Big Apple, but this Broadway runs through downtown Fargo, N.D. A decade ago, this same street was just another unremarkable central district in a Midwestern town: bland restaurants, adequate hotels, no decent coffee. After the local stores closed for the day, the street was mostly populated by a few hard-drinking louts.
That has all changed, part of a transformation that foreshadows the growth of the vast Great Plains region. “I come from a big city, but I like the lifestyle here,” says Marshall Jackson, an African-American who played football for the nearby University of Minnesota, Crookston, and now works for the local Audubon Society. “In a decade this place will be a small Minneapolis. Everyone sees a bright future ahead.”
Continue Reading at Newsweek.
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