Amy Stearns - Doing Cool Stuff in Detroit Lake

Amy Sterns - Executive Director of Project 412 in Detroit Lakes. Photo by Project 412

In a land of giants, Amy Sterns brims with ideas both big and small. Committed to place and the people who animate place, Amy spearheads Project 412, an ambitious placemaking enterprise in Detroit Lakes that builds community through public art experiences, entrepreneurial ignition, and making good on hometown hype by “Doing Cool Sh*t.”

Detroit Lakes, population 9,981, in northwestern Minnesota, is not a large town (it ranks as Minnesota’s 103rd most populous city), but it does boast 412 area lakes and a history of bringing big ideas to life. Those precious lakes give Project 412 its name; Amy and her team of 7 give Detroit Lakes, or “DL” as locals call it, an organizing boost to keep things hopping, and is in keeping with town leaders who came before them. “We have a history here of re-invention,” Amy offers over a draft beer at Bucks Mill Brewing in downtown Detroit Lakes. “Really incredible people came before us. They invested in a medical system. Great schools. A one-mile long public beach.” 

Downtown Detroit Lakes. Photo by Tracy nordstrom

Her belief in “lake life” as a personal and community antidote for what ails us was instilled early.  Amy grew up on Ottertail Lake, about 40 miles from Detroit Lakes. She recalls her “small-resort life,” where working odd jobs and learning to sail were consequential endeavors toward contentment, when she was as young as 9 or 10 years old. “Ottertail Lake is my place,” Amy declares. “My joke with my children is that Ottertail Lake water will cure anything, any woe.”  She values the independence and exploration she was afforded as a young girl on the lake, dealing with weather, wind shifts, and whatever came up. “I was an only child,” she says. “I had an opportunity to be in the world, imagining.” 

Avid sailors on Detroit Lake. Photo: Detroit Lakes Tribune

After college and a decade of living and working in Minneapolis, Amy and her husband longed for a return to lake life; Amy wanted her kids to have the freedom to sail, to putter in boats, to be self-guided as she was. Amy’s husband took a job in Detroit Lakes. “I was the ‘Trailing Wife,’” she recounts on their relocation. “I had a 9-month-old baby. We bought an older house in town that needed a lot of repairs.” She remembers that while many workmen came to the house, she didn’t meet any women. She knew she needed to make connections, make herself known in her new place. “I would walk into town, I’d go into every store, dang near every day.” Amy cut quite a figure with her little one in tow: “Bright red winter jacket, blue jogging stroller. We’d just walk.” 

Amy then did something that she wasn’t sure small town people normally did: she threw a party and invited total strangers. “I needed to meet people. It was winter, it was cold,” she says. Amy put invitations in each of the mailboxes along the route she walked, and invited her husband’s work colleagues. On the chosen Saturday night, 6 pm rolled around, and nobody showed up.  Amy panicked. Then she noticed the Catholic Church parking lot across the street from their house was full. It was Lent. Everyone nearby was at church! At 6:30, the church emptied, and their house filled up. “Neighbors met neighbors who they hadn’t met before!” she gushed. The event was a small victory for community, for nonconformity. Amy’s take away: “I think it’s all about how you put yourself out there.”

Amy continued to work as her children grew. For two decades, Amy applied her innovating and inviting skills running the historic Holmes Theatre, an important center for culture and gathering in Detroit Lakes. That work offered deep familiarity with community funders and local business owners, and she became adept at outreach and storytelling. The Holmes’ motto was “Step Inside and See the World!” Amy reminded her new hometown, “You live in all this great nature, and you can see the world in DL.  Even if you never leave Becker County, you can know the world through the arts.”

Historic Holmes Theatre Downtown Detroit Lakes. Photo by Holmes Theatre

In 2020, Covid hit Detroit Lakes, like everywhere, hard. And the arts took a deeper hit than most enterprises in DL. The pandemic coincided with Amy’s stride into middle-age – a time of natural, formidable change  -  and Amy, along with many of her female friends in town, was reconsidering her work role. The children had grown up and moved on to college or beyond. The world of commerce and community gathering had changed, and each took on a greater priority for Amy. “We were talking about cool things other communities were doing. [My friends and I would] say to each other, ‘Wouldn’t that be great in DL?’” Their collective energy was compelling. “Let’s do some cool shit for a while,” became Amy’s call to action. “We need to leave a legacy here,” Amy told her pals. “We can’t just keep yapping. We need to do some stuff.” That recognition became their refrain: “I guess we’re doing this!”

Project 412 is going on just two and a half years of #DCS (Doing Cool Stuff) in Detroit Lakes.  Amy initiated her endeavor with an ambitious financial goal: entice 412 individual donors to give $412 a year for 4 years and 12 months (which, if you are doing the math, is a full 5 years) and enlist over 20 ‘Foundational Sponsors’ and other funders to support daily operations of Project 412 and fund placemaking and entrepreneurial ideas, big and small. “We call our investors ‘White Caps’ and ‘Wave Makers,’” she says, noting her confidence in water to make a great life possible, adding: “Our local people fund everything and are matched by a local foundation.” 

To date, Amy has secured 300 individuals of the intended 412 ‘Wave Makers’ to give at the $412 level (and 25+ ‘White Caps’ who give $4120.00 annually). She got office furniture donated to outfit the Project 412 office space, and she has built a Board of Directors and staff who excel in arts management, web development, marketing, nonprofit leadership, business and entrepreneurship, banking, and fundraising. Amy’s independence and sense of adventure guide her: “We are going to try stuff at Project 412. We won’t get everything right. We’re not going to have a lot of meetings; we’re not going to debate.” Amy wants action and cool sh*t happening in DL without a lot of foot dragging or bureaucracy or agonizing over the small stuff. “Let’s inspire the community,” she offers. “Let’s assume we can DO stuff and that people will like it. Let’s have a mindset of abundance, not scarcity.”   

Project 412’s website and winter and summer brochures are full of effects and events they have offed the citizens and visitors of Detroit Lakes, including: 

·      Lighting the trees of downtown park for the winter

·      Launching HOT Dish, a competition for local entrepreneurs and nonprofits to earn microgrants

·      Exhibition of frozen “cave people” and a giant woolly mammoth art piece in city park

·      Trucks & Tunes, music and mobile food on Thursdays all summer in DL

·      Annual Tour Da Lakes community bike rides and races

·      Deep Dive DL, a speaker series profiling the stories of local businesses, their origins, their challenges, their lessons learned

·      Winter Kite Festival

·      Detroit Lakes Poetry Walk

·      Art-wrapped utility boxes throughout DL and 3 building murals

·      Way North of Nashville, a north country music gathering with singer/songwriters and bourbon

·       A pop-up co-working space

·      Pitch 412, a “Shark Tank” like competition for start-up pitches and support

·      Planning for Ortenstone Public Garden with Trails and Sculpture Park

And if all of that isn’t enough to spark DL’s connectivity and cement Amy’s legacy, 2024 brought Danish recycling sculptor, Thomas Dambo to build 5 giant trolls, 1 paunchy yellow rabbit, 3 mirror portals, and 800 birdhouses to public spaces and trails in and around Detroit Lakes. The largest installation of Dambo’s trolls to date anywhere in the world (Dambo has completed over 150 trolls across 20 countries), Detroit Lakes’ “Alexa’s Elixir” Troll Project involved 300+ volunteers and took 5 weeks of active, on-site building to complete. 

Amy enticed Dambo to Detroit Lakes by highlighting the lakes and impressing him with the financial and community support of her neighbors. Dambo and his wife (and 5-month-old twins) visited DL one year before the Troll build and fell in love with the wildlife, lakes, and adventurous spirit of locals and visitors to the area.

To experience the Dambo sculptures, visitors solve clues or follow a “Troll Map” along trails, up hillsides, through ravines, and around lakeshore as they follow yellow and purple birdhouse markers to see Alexa’s Elixir, Ronny Funny Face, Barefoot Frida, Jacob Everear, and Long Leif, Dambo’s tallest troll standing at 36 feet. The installation is so grand, so sprawling, so whimsical that Time magazine anointed Detroit Lakes one of their “World’s Greatest Places” in 2025. Individually, the trolls have garnered between ten and sixty thousand visits each and local businesses are thrilled that the trolls bring additional visitors (and dollars) to the area. 

Despite the hype and the positive national press, Amy Sterns remains humble. “Ours is a blessing of abundance,” she offers as she thinks about how she and Project 412 pulled off the Dambo Troll experience for her beloved DL. She shares the accolades widely, refusing to take credit for the trolls or anything else fully: “I’ve been lucky. Detroit Lakes is populated by generous people. I have friends here in trucking. Who own a forklift; there are carpenters, retired engineers, a telehandler. This town!  We have people here who do all these things, who can do crazy things with their treasure and talents.” 

Amy focuses on inviting people in Detroit Lakes to a crazy party where they might not yet know everyone. She asks them to think big, to focus on making their city the best it can be, to court and welcome connection. And she relies on the grand vision of artists to enliven the place, because she believes “art begs art.” Amy is not afraid of making mistakes or trying something unexpected. When she meets someone who is willing to try something wonderful with her, she says “Let’s do this!” Then she stands back and asks: “What else do you have in your back pocket?”

Alexa’s Elixir - Thomas Dambo Troll in Downtown Detroit Lakes. Photo by Tracy Nordstrom

Resources:

Project 412:  https://project412mn.org/

Thomas Dambo:  https://www.thomasdambo.com/

Photos: Tracy Nordstrom, Project 412