Ernst honors Storm Lake's restored Cobblestone Ballroom as small business of the week

U.S. Sen. Joni Ernst stopped at the restored Cobblestone Ballroom & Event Center in Lakeside and used the visit to spotlight more than a ribbon-cutting story. She named the Storm Lake venue her Small Business of the Week for National Small Business Week, saying the recognition would be entered into the Congressional Record and preserved as part of the 119th Congress.

Ernst announced the honor on Feb. 2, 2026, and said she planned to recognize one small business in each of Iowa’s 99 counties. In Buena Vista County, she chose a property with a long local history: the Cobblestone was founded in 1929 in Storm Lake and once served as a regional draw for dining, dancing and live music before closing in 1986. The building then sat vacant for nearly four decades, turning its comeback into a visible sign of private reinvestment in a rural community.

The current owners, Natalie and Nathan Schumann and Jennifer and Chad Hustedt, bought the property in 2022 and undertook extensive renovations to preserve its character while preparing it for future use. The revival has been phased. The Cobb Tavern opened in October 2023, drawing around 200 people to an early reopening event, and the ballroom grand opening followed on Oct. 5, 2024.

Since then, the Cobblestone has returned to the kind of community role that helped define it for generations. It now hosts weddings, reunions, trivia nights and live music, giving Buena Vista County another event space with the scale to attract business beyond a single night out. By October 2025, the venue was reported to employ 30 people, adding payroll and activity to the local economy as well as foot traffic.

The restoration also kept visible pieces of the building’s past. Workers preserved murals uncovered in the Mermaid Room, charred wood left in the ballroom ceiling and original fixtures that tie the modern event center to the structure that first opened more than 95 years ago. That mix of preservation and reinvestment is part of why Ernst highlighted the project: it is a political signal as much as a commendation, aimed at elevating community-driven development that can help small towns keep landmarks, host visitors and build new business around them.