Superior tourism panel awards grants
Apr. 22—SUPERIOR — The Tourism Development Commission approved its first round of grants since taking over tourism promotion in 2022.
The grants, approved Monday, April 21, give $20,000 for promoting the
Lake Superior Dragon Boat Festival,
$1,200 in support
Grandma's Marathon Superior Nightmare 5K,
and $24,000 toward a master bike trail plan for Superior.
The grants are funded by taxes paid by lodging facilities and are designated to be used for tourism promotion.
"We thought that these are what TDC (the Tourism Development Commission) was developed for," said Councilor Ruth Ludwig, a tourism commissioner and member of the Parks & Recreation Committee.
The Parks & Recreation Committee originally considered the grant applications for funding through the city's recreational grant program, but sent the applications to the Tourism Development Commission for funding instead.
"Dragon boats, of course, brings lots of people from outside the area to town," Ludwig said. "Superior trails, these funds will be matched by an international association to develop biking trails within our city. That could potentially be a really good draw to our community. Grandma's Marathon with the 5K is a wonderful addition to our Spooktacular celebration ... I think every one of these three things are exactly what would tourism dollars should be targeted for."
The Superior Rotary Club hosts the Lake Superior Dragon Boat Festival on the last full weekend in August on Barker's Island.
Superior Rotary member Dan Blank said over the last two years, the organization has spent less on marketing but has traditionally reached out to communities including Twin Cities, on the Iron Range, Ashland, Bayfield, Rice Lake and Eau Claire to promote the event that draws teams of paddlers from multiple states and Canada and the Twin Cities, Blank said.
"I'm in favor of support," Commissioner Pattie Soliday said. "I think this is an excellent event."
However, Soliday said she would like to see the marketing plan as well as the impact of the event on hotel occupancy rates if the Rotary seeks funding again next year.
The
Cyclists of Gitchee Gumee Shores
entered into an agreement with the city last year to collaborate on the development of a trails master plan. COGGS agreed to spearhead fundraising efforts and seek private funds to develop the plan to create natural surface trails in the Superior Municipal Forest and crosstown connecting trails.
"So, a bunch of us amateur bike riders who load our bikes up and go to Duluth to ride the trails ... thought 'come on Superior, we have got to hop on the bandwagon,'" Blank said. "We've got the municipal forest. We've got a lot of green space in the city that we can interconnect. So, people in neighborhoods and families can get some outdoor, fresh air, healthy mind, body, spirit experiences without having to have a bike rack or trailer."
After raising about $6,000 to support matching funds, Blank said the $20,000 grant COGGS was seeking would support the $30,000 match the organization would have to provide for a $30,000 grant to have the International Mountain Bike Association create a master plan for Superior.
Mayor Jim Paine endorsed the application despite having initial reservations about making trails in the Superior Municipal Forest. Paine traveled to Knoxville, Tennessee, last year and saw a trail system in a forest similar in size to Superior.
"Seeing the trails in real life completed in Knoxville really changed my mind 100%," Paine said. "... I really think this would be one of Superior's biggest tourism draws."
Soliday proposed increasing the grant to $24,000 to fill the entire funding gap. Commissioners approved amending the request.
The grant for the
Superior Nightmare 5K
will cover less than 10% of anticipated expenses.
The annual run/walk and costume contest takes place in October and raises funds for the Young Athletes Foundation. Nearly 600 people participated last year.
Ludwig said the funding won't support the parade and other activities planned for Spooktacular. She said those requests could come later.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Epoch Times
2 hours ago
- Epoch Times
Wall Street Review: S&P 500 Breaks 6,000 in Broad Market Rally
The rally in U.S. stocks continued to broaden this week, driven by a resilient labor market and easing trade tensions between the United States and China. For the first time since it reached an all-time high in February, the S&P 500 Index retook the 6,000 mark on June 6 and closed up 1.5 percent for the week. The Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 1.17 percent to finish at 42,746. The Nasdaq rose by 2.18 percent to 19,529, while the Russell 2000 rallied 3.19 percent.
Yahoo
3 hours ago
- Yahoo
Why MongoDB Rallied This Week
MongoDB's first-quarter report and forward guidance impressed Wall Street. Management said the company had the most net customer adds in six years. MongoDB could be a delayed AI winner. 10 stocks we like better than MongoDB › Shares of database disruptor MongoDB (NASDAQ: MDB) rallied 17.7% this week through Friday as of 12:15 p.m. ET, according to data from S&P Global Market Intelligence. MongoDB reported its fiscal first-quarter earnings on Wednesday, trouncing analyst estimates and showing some reacceleration from the prior quarter. MongoDB has said that it would become an artificial intelligence (AI) winner once the "experimentation" phase ended and companies began to build AI-powered software applications. It looks like that may be starting now. Coming into this week, MongoDB was still wallowing in a severe downturn, having been more than cut in half since its 2021 highs and also its early 2024 highs. Revenue had been decelerating amid economic uncertainty, and management said that while it expects to see growth from the AI revolution, that growth wouldn't happen until AI moved from the experimentation phase to the application phase. In the first quarter ending in April, MongoDB began to see some of those benefits. Revenue grew 22% to $549 million, fueled by consumption-based MongoDB Atlas growth of 26%. That overall revenue figure was well above expectations, as well as the prior guidance given by the company of $524 million to $529 million. Non-GAAP (adjusted) earnings per share of $1 nearly doubled, and trounced expectations by $0.34. Management also raised full-year revenue guidance from $2.26 billion to $2.27 billion at the midpoint, and adjusted earnings-per-share figures from $2.51 to $3.03 at the midpoint. On the conference call, MongoDB noted its net customer additions were the highest in over six years, especially self-serve customers. That's really impressive, and highlights AI developers turning to MongoDB as their go-to database to handle and organize the "messiness of the real world" within data connections. Software-as-a-service stocks are generally very expensive, but if MongoDB is in fact on the brink of an acceleration, it could be one of the best values in the space. After this week's surge, shares trade around 8 times this year's revenue guidance, which is expensive for a typical stock, but reasonable for a software stock. Of note, MongoDB also has a significant amount of cash on its balance sheet, at over $2.3 billion, good for 13% of its market cap, and no debt. In terms of AI software plays, MongoDB looks like a promising opportunity, as the stock is still down markedly from its all-time highs. Before you buy stock in MongoDB, consider this: The Motley Fool Stock Advisor analyst team just identified what they believe are the for investors to buy now… and MongoDB wasn't one of them. The 10 stocks that made the cut could produce monster returns in the coming years. Consider when Netflix made this list on December 17, 2004... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you'd have $674,395!* Or when Nvidia made this list on April 15, 2005... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you'd have $858,011!* Now, it's worth noting Stock Advisor's total average return is 997% — a market-crushing outperformance compared to 172% for the S&P 500. Don't miss out on the latest top 10 list, available when you join . See the 10 stocks » *Stock Advisor returns as of June 2, 2025 Billy Duberstein and/or his clients have no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends MongoDB. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy. Why MongoDB Rallied This Week was originally published by The Motley Fool Sign in to access your portfolio
Yahoo
4 hours ago
- Yahoo
Why Wall Street's Dr. Doom now wants to be Dr. Boom
Nouriel Roubini, who's been known as "Dr. Doom" for 17 years, is feeling more upbeat. The economist has scaled back his recession call and thinks the US is headed for an investment boom. He told BI there are three things that have driven his newfound optimism. Wall Street has been calling him "Dr. Doom" for 17 years, but Nouriel Roubini — the economist famous for his persistently bearish and frequently dystopian takes on the world economy — is sounding surprisingly positive lately. He's rescinded his earlier call for a recession, and now sees a US tech and artificial intelligence investment boom unfolding that will uplift the economy through the rest of this decade. By 2030, Roubini thinks economic growth in the US will double from around 2% to 4%, while productivity growth surges from around 1.9% to 3%. The stock market is also likely to climb higher, he told Business Insider in an interview, predicting the S&P 500 would see high single-digit percentage growth in 2025, on par with its historical return. It's a sharp turnaround from the gloomy forecasts he' is known for. Roubini told BI the nickname started to stick in 2008, when the New York Times referred to him as "Dr. Doom" after he correctly called the Great Financial Crisis, he told BI. "Even before, I always said I'm not Dr. Doom and I'm Dr. Realist, first of all," Roubini said. He said that he's made numerous forecasts that were more bullish than the consensus throughout the years when the evidence lines up. "So I don't know why people think that I'm always Dr. Doom. It's not the case." His outlook, though, has brightened considerably since 2022. Back then, he appeared on TV and penned op-eds warning of a coming stagflationary debt crisis. At the time, he described the turmoil he saw looming as an all-in-one financial crisis involving spiraling debt levels, soaring inflation, and a severe recession. Roubini told BI there are a few things that have gotten him to change his tune. Roubini says he began to hear the murmurs of the AI revolution well before ChatGPT went viral at the end of 2022. In his 2022 book, "Megathreats," he acknowledged the potential for artificial intelligence to significantly boost economic growth and serve as a major tailwind for markets. That's become a reality way faster than Roubini expected, and a major reason he's become more bullish, he told BI. He believes the economy could start to reap the growth and productivity benefits of AI in the next several years, particularly as humanoid robots enter the mainstream. A breakthrough in fusion energy would be another bullish force for the economy, Roubini said. Fusion energy hasn't been achieved yet, but tech firms are pouring vast sums of money into making it happen. Chevron and Google contributed to a more than $150 million funding round this week for TAE Technologies, a fusion energy company that plans to have a working prototype power plant by the early 2030s. Type One Energy, another fusion energy firm, also plans to roll out a power plant by the middle of the next decade. "We're not in an AI winter anymore. We had the fusion winter for 40 years. We're not anymore," Roubini said, pointing to the stagnation in tech and fusion energy development is the past. "Now it's happening." President Donald Trump's tariffs may not be as harmful to the US economy as some investors think, Roubini says. He thinks it's more likely that markets will throw a tantrum and force Trump to walk back his most aggressive policies. That's already happened a few times this year. Roubini pointed to sharp sell-offs in the bond market that preceded Trump's 90-day pause of his "Liberation Day" tariffs, and the softening of his tone regarding firing Jerome Powell. "That means the bond vigilantes are the most powerful people in the world," Roubini said. "The instincts might be very bad, but then, markets are unforgiving," he added of policymakers. Roubini speculates that tariffs on China, for instance, could wind up somewhere around 39%, well-below the 145% tariff rate Trump proposed earlier in the year. Meanwhile, AI, quantum computing, and other tech advancements in the US can more than offset the impact of the trade war, Roubini said. Tariffs are expected to drag down GDP growth by 0.06% a year through 2035, according to estimates from the Congressional Budget Office. It's a fraction of the 2 percentage point increase in growth Roubini expects to see by the end of the decade. Roubini now pegs the odds of a recession to just around 25%. Even if the US enters a downturn this year, Roubini says he expects it to be shallow and short, as the Fed can cut interest rates to boost the economy, while tech powers growth over the long-run. That's not to say Dr. Doom has shed all of his bearish views. Roubini says many of the things he feared several years ago — stagflation, spiraling government debt levels, and rising geopolitical conflict — still loom. He rattled off a list of potential risks the US could conceivably face in the future: migration controls fueling stagflation in the economy, the US dollar collapsing in value, and China and the US not reaching a trade agreement and seeing an escalating cold war, to name a few scenarios. "So there's plenty of stuff in the world that can go wrong," he said. Read the original article on Business Insider
