Failed event planner apologizes to creditors

Paul Ridgeway, Minnesota's onetime event-planning impresario, faced skeptical creditors Monday and apologized for leaving them in the lurch after his Dec. 30 Chapter 7 bankruptcy filing.

"We lost everything," Ridgeway said during an hourlong hearing before U.S. Bankruptcy Trustee Nauni Jo Manty. "It may take years," Ridgeway said, but he will do his best to repay everyone.

But the creditors wanted to know where the money went and whether it was used to fund a lavish lifestyle, including "a very luxurious wedding" for his son.

"Did our money go into that?" asked Chris Monroe of Free Style Productions, which is still owed $70,000 for its work during a Republican National Convention event more than two years ago.

Twin Cities real estate developer David Frauenshuh, who lent Ridgeway $150,000, told the trustee he was at the hearing to forgive Ridgeway "as the Christian I am" for not being truthful and not paying him back.

"I'm sorry that hasn't happened," Ridgeway responded.

And Jerome Hertaus, representing Contour Engineering, said his firm had to lay off engineers because of the unpaid $45,000 in services they provided for the design of the Asian World Marketplace, a failed development in Shakopee.

A subdued, sometimes soft-spoken Ridgeway, along with his joint-debtor wife, Rosalind, said the unexpected loss of business three years ago was devastating to his company, Ridgeway International Inc., and several subsidiaries.

"I'm not a Petters. I lost everything," Ridgeway said. "We expected other sales that didn't happen."

Ridgeway and his wife listed $1 million in assets and $4.6 million in creditor claims when they filed their bankruptcy petition.

Ridgeway has a long track record for planning events in the Twin Cities and beyond. He was instrumental in events during the 1992 Super Bowl, the only one ever played in Minnesota. He also orchestrated the 1990 visit of Mikhail Gorbachev, then president of the Soviet Union, to the Twin Cities.

But Ridgeway fell on hard times, he said, when the economy soured and companies pulled back on entertainment expenses.

Ridgeway also got some pointed questions from Manty, the trustee, who wants more financial records from Ridgeway, including bank statements and tax returns for all of Ridgeway's companies. Manty will schedule a further hearing once Ridgeway has obtained those and other financial items.