MINNEAPOLIS — At 8th Street & Nicollet Avenue, brand loyalty lives.
“Oh my gosh, it's so exciting to have the Dayton's windows back,” Mickey Mikeworth said from the sidewalk looking in.
Five decorated windows - two along the street and three in the skyway – now grace the old Dayton’s department store building.
Call it an early Christmas gift from the building’s redeveloper to the city.
“Just makes me miss Dayton’s so much, I just love it,” Kim Stemper said as she admired a window filled with 44 of Dayton’s iconic stuffed Santabears.
For decades, Minnesotans crowded around Dayton's holiday windows. The experience was lost over the years to department store mergers and the downtown store closing.
The redevelopment dubbed “The Dayton’s Project” wanted to bring back some of the excitement.
“We want to make sure we get it right to give honor to that experience,” Don Kohlenberger, a representative for the building owner, said.
Getting it right meant bringing back Kent Hensley, a former Dayton’s creative director who was chosen to help design the first five windows.
Hensley is especially proud of the Santabear display. While at Dayton’s he helped create and design the collector favorites.
“All the bear collection is from one collector,” he says of the window display. “She never took them out of the bags, they were pristine.”
Hensley says the collector gave them to the Dayton Project.
Project managers hope the windows are a forerunner to a type of nostalgia that will permeate the building when re-opened next year under the Dayton’s brand to house shops, restaurants and offices.
The brand clearly still means something to former Dayton’s workers and customers.
“I think it's beautiful, it brings Dayton's back to life,” Becky Lang said as she stopped to take a photo of the Santabear display.
“It’s coming back,” Hensley said. “It’s been a real gift of love.”