10-day festival on Nicollet Mall announced for Super Bowl

MINNEAPOLIS (KMSP) - The Super Bowl will bring quite the party atmosphere to Minneapolis come February.

Friday, the Super Bowl Host Committee announced the Super Bowl LIVE festival will take over Nicollet Mall, bringing 10 days of music and fun to Minneapolis.

The centerpiece of the mall will be a 60-foot tall stage with free nightly concerts. To line up some good performers, the committee put in a call to Minnesota natives and music producing legends Jimmy Jam and Tery Lewis.

“They said yes immediately and they said by the end of the day we’ll have a list for you and they go – ‘How do you like these?’” said Maureen Bausch, the CEO of the host committee.

Other plans include turning downtown buildings into a northern lights display of their own. Each night the event will start with a performance from a Native American dance troupe as a way to drum down the sun each night on the Nicollet Mall.

As the big game will take place during historically one of the coldest weeks of the year in Minnesota, the committee created a plan to embrace the Upper Midwest freeze. Ice sculptures will be placed all over the Twin Cities. Restaurants along the mall will have fully enclosed bars made from ice. The company, Minnesota Ice Sculptures, plans to use 20,000 blocks.

“It’s a lot of ice, so we just moved into our new warehouse, or will be moving in at the end of the month,” said Robby Harrell of Minnesota Ice Sculptures. “It’s about 276,000 square feet of all freezer space, so yeah, it’s going to be really fun.”