LAKE COUNTY— Internal emails obtained by the Timberjay through a data request show that representatives of Lake County Environmental Services and the developers seeking to renovate the Silver Rapids Resort property did not clearly communicate as they tried to determine how many new housing units would be allowed as part of a redevelopment of the resort property.
Uncertainty over the number of units and the square footage of the planned new residential units continued right up until Sept. 4, when the Lake County Planning Commission voted to approve the project’s conditional use permit and that uncertainty led some county staff to assume that the matter would be tabled for action later in the month. Instead, the planning commission voted to approve the conditional use permit and a preliminary plat at the Sept. 4 meeting largely in line with the wishes of the developers.
That decision led to two lawsuits, which prompted the developers this past week to hand in their permits while the project plans are revised.
That false start likely could have been avoided had the planning commission opted to take more time to resolve disagreements over the number of units that zoning regulations allowed.
The developers, led by Sanford Hoff, of F.I. Salter, a large Duluth-based real estate development firm, had provided county staff with conflicting information about the size of the units the firm planned to build for fractional sale and a more permissive interpretation of regulations pertaining to the number of units that would be allowed on the site.
Emails between Hoff and Tanya Feldkamp, the county’s assistant environmental services director, point to problem. “We were made aware of some inconsistencies in the size of the fractional units,” wrote Feldkamp in an Aug. 9 email to Hoff. “The footprint of the structure depicted appears to be 1,488 sf, however, there are two levels of “habitable” space which we were not aware of, because we did not receive floorplans in the application,” she continued. Feldkamp noted that the second floor doubled the habitable space within each unit, which she said would sharply reduce the number of units allowed in both the first and second shoreland “tiers” under the county’s ordinance.
Hoff responded on Aug. 14, informing Feldkamp that the cabin plans were not publicly available. “The plans you are utilizing are not the correct plans and are not accurate,” wrote Hoff. In the same email, Hoff later claimed that the square footages of the fractional units were significantly less than it appeared because they were not including parts of the home interiors, such as bathrooms, closets, hallways, or storage areas, which he said are not considered “habitable space” under the state’s building code.
On Aug. 29, Christine McCarthy, the county’s environmental services director responded in part to Hoff’s Aug. 14 email, noting that the county considered “conditioned space” as the standard for determining square footage of a structure and that that definition included bathrooms.
McCarthy also raised a question about the developer’s intent to subdivide the units it was building through the use of “lock-outs,” and noted that the plans they had submitted showed an additional living room and kitchenette in the lower levels of each unit. McCarthy informed the developers that the use of lock-outs would automatically double the number of units for calculating the density within the shoreland tiers. “It is very important to provide some transparency on your intentions,” she said, in her email sent just six days before the planning commission was expected to take up the matter.
Hoff responded in a Sept. 3 email, noting that his team was revising its calculations and would be eliminating the use of lock-outs. Later that same day, Alex Bushey, director of development for F.I. Salter, noted that the development team had revised the square footage estimates to include bathrooms and that the change increased the square footage of each unit to 1,703. Based on the change, Bushey said the team was revising its request to include 33 units in the first tier and 29 in the second tier.
At 10:55 a.m. on Sept. 4, McCarthy wrote back to Bushey. “I am sorry for not stating this earlier, but we are including the hallways, etc. as well, so we come up with about 2,300 sq. ft. [per unit],” she wrote.
Less than half an hour later, Hoff responded angrily. “Christine— Alex forwarded me the message below. Your new requirement is completely unacceptable! Each time we modify our plans to adjust to your new requirements, at considerable expense, you change the criteria. We are not modifying our plans further!”
“Well— I guess he told me,” wrote McCarthy in an email to Lake County Commissioner Rich Sve twenty minutes after receiving the missive from Hoff. In response to a question from Sve, McCarthy said she’d have revised square footages for the board that evening, adding: “Our frustration lies with the fact that we asked for the floor plans multiple times before we got them so we could have had this all figured a while ago,” she wrote.
County staff
expectations
Throughout their communications with the developers, Lake County planning staff were also in frequent contact with DNR officials over concerns about density of lakeshore development as well as proposed dockage.
DNR area hydrologist Dani Braund, who had been in contact with Tanya Feldkamp for weeks, asked on Sept. 3 if she could submit a letter after the Sept. 4 planning commission meeting. Feldkamp urged her to submit main points by email ahead of the meeting, but said there would likely be more opportunity to weigh in. “The CUP hearing will likely be tabled again tonight, so the complete letter could be included in the packet for the next hearing. Also, since there will be changes with the number of units, the preliminary plat will likely need to be resubmitted, so there is still opportunity for input there,” she wrote.
Instead, later that day, the commission approved both the CUP and the preliminary plat in line with the proposal of the developers.