Brady Drake
The Vision
An Initial Nudge
“The funny thing is when Fargo Brewing started in 2010, I didn’t know any of the owners. I sent them an email just saying that we should consider combining venues like we are here. At the time, they kind of dismissed me and the idea, but then here we are now. At some point later, we started doing events with them in the parking lot and we started handling their anniversary parties that they would have every year in the parking lot. In 2019, I came on board as a partner and bought out two of the founders. At that point, we immediately talked about how we could redevelop the building.” – Jade Nielsen, founder & president, Jade Presents
Laying Out The Hall
“When we first started looking at renovating the building, we had a very different initial idea on where people would come in. We worked with three different architects and we ended up working with Chris Hawley on it. He is somebody that has renovated old buildings and he owns buildings that have been renovated as well. So he looks at a space and wonders how can we lay it out differently. Chris kind of gravitated to the natural light on the south side of the building. In creating the patio on the south side, we had always kind of written it off because of the railroad tracks. Once you clean it up with grass and a perimeter fence, it’s going to be a great private little space. From there, we knew we had to move the grain room, but we also didn’t want to have to change any plumbing or the production area. For the event space, we didn’t know initially what we were going to do with it because it used to be offices. I had initially had the idea of doing a barbershop and a tattoo shop in here too. Unfortunately, the tattoo shop that was going to come in opted to open in Moorhead. I think it was initially planned to have a barbershop, tattoo shop, coffee shop, food vendor and a taproom venue. So we really have not deviated from what we planned outside of the tattoo shop. We haven’t filled the coffee shop, but part of that is because we’re being incredibly picky about what sort of shop we want in there.” – Jade Nielsen
What The Space Means For Jade Presents
“For us at JP, we’ve always wanted to develop more spaces. We’re involved
in The Sanctuary, Bluestem and The Fargo Theatre, but we don’t own those venues. The idea of being able to cultivate something here with the brewery folks just seemed like a good match.” – Jade Nielsen
The Event Space
An overhead door will separate Fargo Brewing’s production area from the event space. The hope is to provide event-goers with the feeling of being in a brewery environment. A full taplist will be featured in the event space too.
According to Nielsen, the event space will hold medium-sized events from concerts to weddings.
What The Hall Means To Fargo-Moorhead
“I think the word community ties into this space. As we look at designing this space and bringing in different aspects, we want this to be a community, too. Now, we can allow all ages in this space, we can allow parents to come in with kids, Maybe dad has a beer, mom gets a coffee and the whole family orders from the food truck. That aspect sort of ties into what we want to cultivate in our own space. However, we also want to add to the neighborhood. There will be a restaurant going up across the street here and now this corner is really growing into something for the community.” – Jade Nielsen
