It was 15 years ago when I first came to Blue Earth, applying for a job as the managing editor here at the Faribault County Register.

I remember that November day fairly clearly. I had taken the whole day off, and left home pretty early, getting the two and a half hour drive to Blue Earth over pretty quickly.

I was here plenty early for the job interview, so it gave me time to both drive around Blue Earth and walk up and down Main Street before I had to head into the Register building for my interview.

I pretty much remember that tour around town, and the fact that I was pretty impressed. The town looked nice, and the downtown buildings all seemed to be filled with businesses.

One thing I remember that interested me was a couple of buildings on the corner of Seventh and Main. I was a little surprised to see a Music Museum and a music store in two of the buildings, and what appeared to be a musical instrument repair business in the third one.

That was something pretty unusual to find in a small town. Little did I realize how unusual it really was, and how many stories I would be writing about those three buildings over the next 15 years.

Honestly, I have lost count.

Soon after I took the job and moved to Blue Earth, I realized that the music museum, music store and music repair store were never open.

I learned that they were owned by a man from Frost, Paul Amundson, and I tried to find out more information in order to do a story, but I was not able to.

It was Amundson, however, who informed me there were actually four Sisters, as there were officially four buildings. The three which faced Main Street and the one which faced Seventh Street behind the southernmost building.

Things changed.

Suddenly, it seemed that the three (or four) buildings had suddenly changed ownership. Now they were owned by a group called Hot Springs Citizens for Progress, located in Hot Springs, South Dakota.

Nothing much had really changed in the appearance of the three buildings. Looking in the windows one could still see literally dozens and dozens of pianos and other musical instruments in the buildings.

I Googled Hot Springs Citizens for Progress and eventually found a phone number for it.

I called the person listed, Robert Johnson, and got ahold of him and did a sort of phone interview. He confirmed his group had taken ownership from Amundson.

His group, he explained, was interested in taking over old, maybe historic buildings and rehabbing them, restoring them to their original condition.

They had done that to some buildings in South Dakota, he claimed. When I quizzed him about how they came to own three buildings in Blue Earth, he was a little unclear. They knew Amundson and somehow some type of deal was struck.

Later I learned that there were a lot of questions about this transfer of ownership, and how legal it was, along with many questions about who owned all of the pianos inside – Amundson, Johnson, or lots of other folks.

There was at least one court case on the issue of ownership.

When I quizzed Robert Johnson about his group’s specific plans for the buildings, he said they planned to apply for grants and raise funds in order to restore the buildings. As far as what would be housed in the buildings, Johnson said that would be up to the citizens of Blue Earth.

In 2012, Johnson camped out in the Three Sisters, and went to a City Council meeting claiming the city was harassing him. The council had put a fee on buildings being used just for storage.

Eventually, after three more years or so, the city and the EDA took over ownership of the Three (or Four) Sisters. They had an auction to sell off the pianos (about a third of them sold), then went about cleaning out the buildings, getting rid of the pianos, and selling the massive organ which was upstairs in the former Masonic Lodge.

One local business person presented a plan for rehabbing the buildings and the apartments upstairs, but he eventually decided against doing the project.

In 2018 the council and EDA decided to sell to the Rural Renaissance Project (RRP). The sale was completed in 2019, with several stipulations, which included HVAC installation and painting the south wall.

Now the city is removing all stipulations, giving total ownership to Project 3 Sisters, a subsidiary of RRP.

Basically they are washing their hands of the whole thing.

They, like so many of us in Blue Earth, still cling to the hope that something wonderful can be done with these Three, or is it Four, Sisters.

Only time will tell.

And to be honest, I feel fairly certain that the Register has not printed its last story about these poor Sisters, no matter how many of them there are.

I just hope it will be Good News story.