Star Tribune
Kathy Cargill finally reveals her plan for Duluth’s Park Point and the reason she’s scrapping it
After months of wondering, speculating — and writing letters to ask — why Kathy Cargill was buying up a dozen properties on Duluth’s Park Point over the last 14 months, the city’s mayor and community members may have an answer from the apparently peeved member of the billionaire Cargill family.
She told the Wall Street Journal that she was planning to beautify and modernize the neighborhood, but the pushback, including a message from Duluth mayor Roger Reinert, has caused her to change her mind.
“I think an expression that we all know — don’t pee in your Cheerios — well, he kind of peed in his Cheerios right there, and definitely I’m not going to do anything to benefit that community,” Cargill said in an interview with the publication.
Reinert, a former Park Point resident, said earlier this month that he’d sent a letter to Cargill asking her to meet but had not received a response. He then drafted another letter that made clear that while he respected her right to buy the properties through the private market, the residents of Park Point had questions about the intent of the purchases. He referenced a housing crunch in the city of Duluth in the letter and took to social media to promise residents that the point’s parkland will remain public, as well as its beach and street access points. In his Facebook post, he also noted that homeowners can choose not to sell to Cargill.
Cargill told the Wall Street Journal that she planned to build homes for some relatives, open a coffee shop and fund improvements to city parkland, as well as build facilities for pickleball, basketball and street hockey. But the mayor’s comments, news coverage of the purchases and criticism that others showed her online triggered a change of heart for Cargill, according to the story Saturday.
“The good plans that I have down there for beautifying, updating and fixing up Park Point park or putting up that sports court, forget it,” she told the publication. “There’s another community out there with more welcoming people than that small-minded community.”
Cargill told the Wall Street Journal that she’s still getting calls from residents hoping to sell their homes and she’s considering more purchases. She also plans to make her family’s vacation home more private with landscaping.
“Those people aren’t running me out,” she told the paper. “They can posture themselves all they want, but I’m not going anywhere.
More than 20 parcels now belong to the Cargill’s North Shore LS LLC, and many of the properties sold at twice their estimated value or more. The LLC bought about half of the single-family houses sold on Park Point last year, with the median price of all sold homes about $477,000.
Reinert and Cargill did not immediately respond to the Star Tribune’s requests for comment on Saturday. Reinert also declined to be interviewed by the Wall Street Journal, the article noted.
“I have done everything in my power to remedy this situation, and it continues to get more and more violent by the day,” Moturi wrote. “There have been numerous times when I’ve seen Sawchak outside and contacted law enforcement, and there was no response. I am not confident in the pursuit of Sawchak given that Sawchak attacked me, MPD officers had John detained, and despite an HRO and multiple warrants — they still let him go.”
On Friday, five City Council members sent a letter to Mayor Jacob Frey and Police Chief Brian O’Hara expressing their “utter horror at MPD’s failure to protect a Minneapolis resident from a clear, persistent and amply reported threat posed by his neighbor.”
Council Members Andrea Jenkins, Elliott Payne, Aisha Chughtai, Jason Chavez and Robin Wonsley went on to allege that police had failed to submit reports to the County Attorney’s Office despite threats being made with weapons, and at times while Sawchak screamed racial slurs. Sawchak is white and Moturi is Black.
The council members also contend in their letter that the MPD told the County Attorney’s Office that police did not intend to execute the warrant for “reasons of officer safety.”
At a Friday afternoon news conference at MPD’s Fifth Precinct, O’Hara said police had been working to arrest Sawchak since at least April, but “no Minneapolis police officers have had in-person contact with that suspect since the victim in this case has been calling us.” The chief pointed out that Sawchak is mentally ill, has guns and refuses to cooperate “in the dozens of times that police officers have responded to the residence.”
O’Hara put aside the option to carry out “a high-risk warrant based on these factors [and] the likelihood of an armed, violent confrontation where we may have to use deadly force with the suspect.” The preference, he said, was to arrest Sawchak outside his home, but “in this case, this suspect is a recluse and does not come out of the house.”
ROCHESTER – The Federal Transit Administration has green-lighted an $85 million grant supporting the development of the city’s planned Link Bus Rapid Transit system.
The FTA formally announced the grant on Friday during a ceremonial check presentation outside of the Mayo Civic Center, one of the seven stops planned for the bus line. The federal grant will cover about 60% of the project’s estimated $143.4 million price tag, with the remaining funds coming from Destination Medical Center, the largest public-private development project in state history.
Set to go live in 2026, the 2.8-mile Link system will connect downtown Rochester, including Mayo Clinic’s campuses, with a proposed “transit village” that will include parking, hundreds of housing units and a public plaza. The bus line will be the first of its kind outside the Twin Cities — with service running every five minutes during peak hours.
“That means you may not even need to look at a schedule,” said Veronica Vanterpool, deputy administrator for the FTA. “You can just show up at your transit stop and expect the next bus to come in a short time. That is a game changer and a life-transformational experience in transit for those people who are using it and relying on it.”
The planned Second Street corridor is already one of the busiest roads in Rochester, carrying more than 21,800 vehicles a day, and city planners have talked for years about ways to reduce traffic congestion in the city’s downtown. Local officials estimate that the transit line, which will rely on a fleet of all-electric buses, will handle 11,000 riders on its first day of operation and save eight city blocks of parking.
Speaking to a crowd of about 100 people gathered on Friday, Sen. Amy Klobuchar said the project shows Rochester is thinking strategically about how it handles growth.
“If you just plan the business expansion, and you don’t have the workforce, you don’t have the child care, the housing or the transit, it’s not going to work very well as a lot of communities across the nation have found,” Klobuchar said.
A St. Paul man who was in critical condition following a fire last week at his home in the Battle Creek neighborhood has died, marking the city’s eighth fire death this year.
According to a news release from the St. Paul Fire Department, the man was found unconscious in the basement of a house on Nelson Street early in the morning of Oct. 17, after fire crews had extinguished a fire at the two-story residence. Paramedics undertook life-saving measures before taking him to the hospital.
No one else was injured in the fire, which was found to have been accidental and started in the engine of a car parked in the tuck-under garage. The fire was confined to the garage, but heavy smoke filled the house. Smoke detectors enabled others in the house to exit safely, officials said.
