By Mondell Keck | The Brookings Register
BROOKINGS — Almost one year ago — this coming Tuesday, to be precise — a blaze in downtown Brookings reshaped the business district in a way it hadn’t been in years.
Brost’s Fashions at 318 Main Ave. burned to the ground, with the call coming in a bit past 5 a.m. on Dec. 30, 2024. By the time all was said and done, not only was Brost’s a blackened husk, but its damaging effects had spread to ensnare Seven Songbirds Boutique, The Exchange, multiple businesses in the Grunewaldt Building and apartment dwellers.
In all, four buildings and 21 businesses, along with 12 apartments and their 17 residents, were affected. The fire’s origins were traced to the basement in Brost’s Fashions, in an area near an electrical service panel, but its cause was never established. It was, however, determined to be accidental in nature.
In today’s edition of The Brookings Register, we look at how downtown Brookings has bounced back since that dreadful morning from the perspectives of several businesses affected by it, including Seven Songbirds and The Exchange.
We also reached out to Todd Brost, whose mother Bernice operated Brost’s Fashions. While they weren’t ready to talk for a full story, Todd Brost, who owned the building the business was in, said the family plans to reconstruct the building and re-open at some point in 2026.
Rallying together
“It was probably one of the nastiest, most contrary fires I’ve ever fought in 45 years,” now-retired Brookings Fire Department Chief Peter Bolzer told The Brookings Register in a Jan. 3, 2025, story. “The fire wasn’t what it appeared to be. It didn’t behave the way we expected it to behave, and it seemed like we were behind the eight ball constantly.”
That said — and it’s an old phrase, but one which still rings true — it could have been worse. No one died, and only minor injuries were reported among firefighters from Brookings, Volga, Ramona and Madison. The community rallied in the fire’s aftermath, putting on fundraising events and undertaking assistance efforts both governmental and private in nature.
In the end, it all paid off. Altogether, more than $75,000 was raised to help people and businesses alike — perhaps “a drop in the bucket,” so to speak, but every dollar counts in situations like these.
“That just goes to show the power of the people that we have in this community,” Downtown Brookings Executive Director Kirsten Gjesdal said at a City Council meeting in November. “The majority of the businesses chose to relocate downtown, if they needed to relocate. I think that’s just a great sign of how important a neighborhood like that is — those business owners saw the importance of this kind of neighborhood for the success of their business and chose to reopen there.”
That they did, with the most obvious evidence of those choices popping up in the form of new construction on Main Avenue in downtown Brookings, especially where Seven Songbirds was — and will be again.
“All things considered, we should be very proud of our business community and how they managed this difficult last year,” Gjesdal said in a Dec. 18 interview. “The Exchange is very close to reopening. Seven Songbirds building has a roof on it, or the start of a roof on it. We had a new business open up in the front of 314 Main Ave.”
She said the new business is Ma’s House Vintage, which previously had pop-up shops for several years, including several in downtown.
“Those are all things I think we should be celebrating,” Gjesdal said. “Big changes when, one year ago, those spaces were destroyed or nearly destroyed, and now there’s life back in there.”
New future awaits
It was a hard-fought effort, one that kept firefighters actively fighting the blaze or monitoring the site for 28 hours straight, but they ultimately triumphed and kept it from spreading beyond Brost’s Fashions.
“Even with everything that was thrown against the department, I just can’t say enough about how well the firefighters performed,” Bolzer said in a Jan. 3, 2025, story. “Given the situation that we were in, we could have lost four to five buildings very easily. Those guys busted their butts to ensure that didn’t happen.”
And, just as those firefighters gave everything they had on Dec. 30, 2024, to stop that fire in its tracks, so too have the businesses and people in downtown Brookings in the year since, rising like a phoenix from the ashes: Rebirth, renewal and overcoming adversity.
“I think our downtown is going in a very positive direction, and I hope it’s something that our community continues to support,” Gjesdal said.
In closing, she spoke to the broader picture as well.
“There have been some great changes that have happened in the neighborhood over the last few years to improve some of our aging buildings and to improve life safety — sprinkler systems and fire walls, that kind of thing,” Gjesdal said. “I hope when people come down, they can see the good work and the investments that are taking place in our neighborhood, in these historic buildings. I think the neighborhood feels better and looks better. Obviously, it’ll be great when that sidewalk can be reopened and those buildings are officially reopened.”
— Contact Mondell Keck at [email protected].
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