81st Annual Bemidji Jaycees Water Carnival Underway, with a Few Changes

The Bemidji Jaycees Water Carnival kicked off on Wednesday, July 2nd, but this year due to storm damage in the city, the festivities will look a little bit different.

Merriam’s Midway is back once again in the Sanford Center parking lot after opening Wednesday night. It will be open from 1 to 11 p.m. through Saturday, July 5th and 1 to 7 p.m. on Sunday, July 6th.

Due to impacts from the storm, the entertainment tent on the waterfront will not be a part of this Water Carnival. But instead of cancelling music events, they will now take place at The Loft Event Center in downtown Bemidji.

“Being lucky enough of managing an event center, I had the thought when I had had multiple downtown business owners come to me very concerned on not having that entertainment tent,” said Brittany Isensee, a Bemidji Jaycee who’s also the event and marketing manager at The Loft. “It has a huge impact for them revenue-wise not having that tent here and keeping people downtown. So I decided to reach out to our owners and I said, ‘Hey, I would love to be able to host the live music events, at least up here,’ and we did.

“We had to get very creative,” she continued. “We know that the Jaycees’ budget is not large, and not being able to make up in those bar sales that usually the tent carries, we decided to offer our venue for free.”

The Red, White and BOOM! fireworks were held Wednesday night instead of on Friday, July 4th due to the Jaycees needing a new vendor for this year. Bingo and the Color Run will go on without any changes.

The Grand Parade will also be held on Sunday, but the route has been changed due to significant storm damage. The new route starts at the intersection of 8th Street and Beltrami Avenue, travels south on Beltrami Avenue, turns west on 4th Street for one block, and then heads north along Minnesota Avenue to end again on 8th Street.

Due to the change in the Grand Parade route, registrations will only be accepted online until July 3rd. There will be no on-site registration.

A schedule of events for this year’s Water Carnival can be found on the Bemidji Jaycees website.