Withrow Ballroom up for auction

For nearly 90 years, the Withrow Ballroom in Withrow, MN has kept the music going, but that all came to an end Oct. 28, 2017. The place is going up for sale, the Stillwater Gazette reports.

History of the ballroom

It’s believed to be the oldest ballroom in the state, tracing its ancestry to 1928, when Ben and Anna Zahler built the place. They sold it to their son and for several decades it served as a popular polka venue as one Zahler generation sold it to the next.

Rock took over in the ’60s as the German immigrant farmers began to be outnumbered.

“When we first bought the place, it was just a white, rectangular box in the middle of a corn field,” Pete Babcock, who bought the ballroom in 1986 and sold it a dozen years later, tells the paper. “Do you know that at the time Washington County had more horses per capita than anywhere in the country? So, we decided to add the gazebo and fix the place up to look like a Kentucky horse farm.”

Babcock said during his time owning the place, more than 1,000 weddings took place at the venue.

“It makes you think about the tens of thousands of people who came to the Withrow ballroom on a Friday or Saturday night,” Babcock said. “The number of people whose grandparents met at a polka dance, or the hundreds of people who got married there.”

Babcock said he doesn’t want to think about what will happen if the Withrow Ballroom comes down to make way for some kind of new development.

“My heart and soul went into it, and to see it go is breaking my heart,” Babcock said. “Besides my kids, the Withrow Ballroom is my legacy and some of the best years of my life.”

The ballroom went into foreclosure in 2009, when a Stillwater nursery owner rescued it.

Steve Ghizoni, frontman of the Rockin’ Hollywoods, who practically called the place home, said he wouldn’t be surprised to see the ballroom torn down.

The property will be auctioned off Saturday, Nov. 11.

Dancers’ memories

Ida Weber drove four hours Thursdays to dance at the Withrow Ballroom and Event Center.

“It’s two hours up, and it’s two hours down,” said Weber, who lives in Claremont, MN. “It’s a nice ballroom. It’s always good here, and they always have good bands, and it’s just fun.”

But Weber, who has been making the trek three times a month for the past several years, is worried about her dancing future.

Thursday afternoon’s dance, which ran from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. Oct. 26, and featured the Top Notchmen, was the last polka dance on the schedule.

“I’m going to have to go to Rochester, Mankato, northern Iowa, and Wisconsin,” Weber said. “I don’t want to, but I have to. I want to dance three times a week. I just love to dance. I’ve been dancing since I was a little girl, and I’m 81.”

On Thursday afternoon, Jim and Judy Haupt of Amery, WI twirled around the gleaming maple dance floor in matching blue-and-red country-western polka outfits.

“You look around, and you see all these older people – there are not a lot of young ones here,” said Judy Haupt, who is 76. “Some are in their 90s, and they’re dancing. What better activity than dancing?”

Jim Haupt, 72, said he began going to dances at the ballroom when he was 19. “Lord knows that’s a lot of years ago,” he said. “I met my first wife here, I’ve got to get that on record.”

During a break after dancing the two-step, Judy Haupt got tears in her eyes as she talked about the closing. “We love this place,” she said. “We have met so many nice people here.”

One of the couples is Rex and Beverly Stearns of Mahtomedi. Rex Stearns, 85, has dementia, and Beverly Stearns, 78, said dancing at the Withrow is one of the few activities he can still enjoy.

“This is like his second home,” she said. “He loves to dance. He knows the songs. Dancing is it – that’s all he knows – me and dancing. We love this place. We could go to other places to dance, but he won’t recognize the buildings. He won’t recognize the set up.”

“We’re like a big family here,” said Larry Hoff of Roberts, WI. “We’re going to miss it.”

Hoff met his wife, Sharon, at a dance 55 years ago – they’ve been dancing together ever since, he said.

“I came to a dance not knowing anyone,” he said. “I saw a couple of guys that I knew and went over and talked to them. Her brother was there. She came over to talk to him. At the time she was 16, and I said, ‘Hey, would you like to dance?’”

A polka band played at their 50th anniversary party.

“All the young people who were there were saying ‘You know how to enjoy life,’” Sharon Hoff said. “They said ‘Everybody is so happy and enjoying life and having fun. You guys know how to do it.’ We’re going to miss this.”

The last scheduled event at the Withrow is a Rockin’ Hollywoods show from 8 p.m. to midnight Saturday, Oct. 28.

The auction

The ballroom and its 11.5 acres of land is being sold via a live online auction that will close Saturday, Nov. 11. Hines Auction Service of Ellsworth, WI, is handling it. The asking price was $216,000; bidding was up to $215,500 as of 5 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 26.

The current owner

Owner Paul Bergmann bought the 10,000-square-foot ballroom in 2009. Also the owner of Bergmann’s Nurseries in Stillwater, he recently sold the nursery’s 21.5 acres near Manning Avenue and Minnesota 36 to Lakeview Hospital in Stillwater. The property had been in his family since the 1950s.

“At this point, I’ve got enough with the business closing down here in Stillwater,” said Bergmann, 61, who lives in Stillwater and also farms about 500 acres near Marine on St. Croix. “I need to focus on this and the removal of the property. The ballroom is just more than I can handle right now.”

Bergmann said he hopes the business will continue as a ballroom.

“I hope they get another owner who can try to nurture it like I tried to do, and keep the building and keep the dances and keep the same routine,” he said. “I tried to do the best I could to keep the business going, but it’s time for a new, fresh outlook.”