Star Tribune
Duluth City Council approves tax breaks for housing development on Central High School site
DULUTH — The stage is set for what could be the city’s largest private housing development, with more than a thousand apartments and condos planned for a prime hilltop site with a sweeping view of Duluth and Lake Superior.
The project, with a potential investment of $500 million, cleared a major hurdle Monday with City Council approval of tax subsidies totaling $26 million for the first phase of the 1,200-1,300-unit development.
“The city of Duluth has been waiting for 13 years for something to happen here,” Councilor Arik Forsman said. “This is the right project.”
The developer is New York-based Luzy Ostreicher of Chester Creek View LLC and Incline Plaza Development LLC. He bought 53 acres of the former Central High School hillside property for $8 million last March from the Duluth school district. The 50-year-old school was demolished in 2022 after sitting empty since 2011. Developers have said the site is difficult with its rocky, marshy landscape, and two major development deals for the site fell through.
Incline Village is expected to include market-rate housing to be built in three phases over seven to 10 years. It would also house 80,000 square feet of retail space and several public spaces, including a trailhead pavilion and potentially an amphitheater.
The first round of subsidies are intended to pay Ostreicher back for infrastructure such as utility connections. Subsequent TIF districts still need to be approved. Tax subsidies are expected to account for about one-third, or up to $50 million, of the developer’s financing gap. That gap is projected to be up to $130 million, according to the city.
One of Ostreicher’s previous projects includes 700 condos in Spring Valley, New York. He also owns Duluth’s Endi and Kenwood Village apartment and retail complexes, although he didn’t develop the properties. Those investments and others total $85 million spent in the city, evidence of Ostreicher’s financial credibility, said David Montgomery, Duluth’s Chief Administrative Officer.
Some had questioned the developer’s financial capabilities, he wrote in a letter to councilors Monday.
The majority of councilors were enthusiastic about the project, but some wanted to delay their decision in hopes an affordability requirement could become part of the agreement. The city is using redevelopment tax increment financing, which doesn’t require any of the units to fit affordability guidelines.
“The challenging nature of the site and the consequent costs to construct on such a site makes low income/affordable housing economically difficult,” Montgomery wrote, noting at the meeting that the developer would entertain that type of housing in future phases.
The multi-building project is undergoing an Alternative Urban Areawide Review to study how different development scenarios will affect the environment. The project is contingent on approval of that review.
The planned public amenities are required by the agreement, but details, including financing and design, aren’t finalized. The trailhead will connect to the Duluth Traverse and other trails.
Construction on the first set of apartments and condos encompassing 340 units and 30,000 square feet of retail is set to begin this summer. Demand will indicate how soon the remaining phases are built. The school district recently developed a back portion of the property for an administrative building, so will share space with the development.
Anti-police brutality activists interrupted a Minneapolis City Council meeting Thursday to call for Police Chief Brian O’Hara’s firing, saying his department failed a Black man who begged police for help for months, to no avail, before he was finally shot in the neck by his white neighbor.
John Sawchak, 54, is charged with shooting Davis Moturi, 34, even though three warrants had been issued for his arrest in connection with threats to Moturi and other neighbors.
Activists showed up at the council meeting and asked for time to talk about the case. Instead, the council recessed and activists took the podium and castigated the city for failing Black people, even as state and federal officials are forcing the police department into court-sanctioned monitoring because of past civil rights violations.
Nekima Levy Armstrong, founder of the Racial Justice Network, said O’Hara needs to be held accountable.
“This is not the first time instance where the community has raised concerns about his poor judgment, poor leadership, blaming the community and excuses. It’s completely unacceptable for him to get away with it,” she said. “How many Black people’s doors have they kicked in for less?”
On Thursday the council voted to request the city auditor review the city’s involvement in and response to the matters between Moturi and Sawchak.
Mayor Jacob Frey released a statement in response saying he supports the council’s call for an independent review of the case, but O’Hara “will continue to be the Minneapolis police chief.”
Protesters also questioned why the public hadn’t heard from Community Safety Commissioner Toddrick Barnette, who called a news conference within hours to say he’s not going to fire O’Hara and the city leadership supports him.
A Girl Scout from Troop 58068 told the Woodbury City Council recently that they should allow backyard chickens in the city: They cheer people up, she said.
It turned out that chickens were on an upcoming agenda and, perhaps pushed a bit by the scout’s lobbying, the Woodbury City Council at their next meeting passed a new ordinance allowing for backyard hens.
The new ordinance went into effect on Oct. 23, the night of the council meeting, and will allow people who live on property zoned R-2, a “rural estate” district, to have backyard chickens. A typical city lot is zoned R-4 and those areas still cannot have chickens, the council said.
The city has received requests “here and there” for the last several years about backyard chickens, City Council Member Andrea Date said.
Backyard chickens come have home to roost — and never leave — in a host of other Minnesota cities that allow them, from Hopkins to Thief River Falls. It’s long been allowed in both St. Paul and Minneapolis, and new cities started approving backyard coops during the pandemic, when interest spiked.
In Woodbury, it wasn’t until the question was included on the city’s biannual survey that city staff knew how people felt. The survey found less support for chickens on a typical city lot — just 13% of respondents said they strongly approve of the idea while 43% percent strongly disapproved — but a majority approved of backyard chickens on lots of 1 acre or more.
The city’s rules until recently only allowed chickens on “rural estate” properties of five or more acres.
The new ordinance allows up to six hens, but no roosters, on property less than four acres that meets the zoning requirements. Larger properties can have an additional two chickens per acre above four acres. The ordinance also sets a height limit for chicken coops of 7 feet. No license or permit is required in Woodbury for backyard chickens.
Star Tribune
Anonymous donor pays overdue bill for Fergus Falls home where town’s first Black resident lived
A $10,000 overdue special assessment bill threatening tax forfeiture of a historic Fergus Falls home was paid off this week thanks to an anonymous donor.
Prince Albert Honeycutt lived at 612 Summit Avenue East, renamed Honeycutt Memorial Drive in 2021. Not only was Honeycutt the town’s first Black resident — settling there in 1872 from Tennessee — he was the state’s first Black professional baseball player, first Black firefighter and first Black mayoral candidate.
He was an early pioneer and prominent businessman who owned a barbershop in town. Missy Hermes, with the Otter Tail County Historical Society, said Honeycutt and his wife were likely the first Black people in Minnesota to testify in a capital murder trial of a man who was convicted and hanged in Fergus Falls.
“In other places, you would never have a Black person testifying against a white person, especially a woman, too, before women could vote even,” Hermes said. “Obviously he was respected enough.”
Nancy Ann and Prince Albert Honeycutt with their children inside the now-historic Honeycutt house in 1914. Photo from the collections of the Otter Tail County Historical Society.
When dozens of people from Kentucky moved to Fergus Falls in April 1898, known as “the first 85,” Honeycutt helped integrate them into the community.
He died in 1924 at age 71 and is buried in Oak Grove Cemetery in Fergus Falls.
Up until 2016, several owners lived in the Honeycutt home. But the city bought and sold the house to nonprofit Flowingbrook Ministry for $1 to take over the tax-exempt property and operate the ministry.
Ministry founder Lynette Higgins-Orr, who previously lived in Fergus Falls, moved to Florida several years ago and little activity has been going on in the historic home since. But she said there are plans to make it into a museum.
