FALL LAKE TWP- “We are exploring all of our options, including any possible legal actions,” said Mary Louise Icenhour, the president of Community Advocates for Responsible Development, or CARD.
The founders of CARD decided to officially organize after the Lake County Planning Commission approved two zoning applications to renovate and expand the aging Silver Rapids resort earlier this month.
“We don’t have problems with updating the resort,” Icenhour said. “It’s the scope that’s the problem.”
CARD members had pushed for an environmental assessment worksheet, or EAW, which the planning commission rejected. They has subsequently hoped the conditions on the resort’s shiny-new conditional use permit would have included some teeth to control the expansion of buildings, boats, and people on the property, but were left underwhelmed by the conditions ultimately approved.
The resort expansion will add 49 three-bedroom, three-bath timeshare cabins, and 12 new docks for a total of 17. The developers claim the current occupancy of the resort is 280, with an estimated future occupancy of 400. CARD disputes these numbers, contending the current occupancy is lower and the future occupancy is well over 400, according to an analysis by CARD board member Charlie Marsden, whose cabin is across the rapids from the resort.
“The population of Fall Lake,” Icenhour said, “is around 600. Adding all those people will definitely affect everything, including the traffic at the bridge over the Silver Rapids, the noise, and the boat traffic next to the Boundary Waters.
Founding CARD
Charlie and Marilyn Marsden formed CARD at the beginning of last week but decided that the group would be better served with a year-round resident at the helm. The Marsdens live in Fall Lake for five months every year and spend the rest of their time as residents of New York City. Icenhour splits her time between her cabin on White Iron Lake and her house in Ely.
In the less than two weeks that CARD has existed, it has sent 496 letters to households along White Iron and Farm lakes, recruited over 100 members, formed an eight-member board, and retained a land use lawyer from the Taft law firm in Minneapolis as legal counsel.
“In our outreach, we found people who had no knowledge of the proposed resort expansion,” Icenhour told the Timberjay.
Most of the work sending out the letters last week was handled by Icenhour and another CARD board member, Kathleen Annala, who lives on the east shore of White Iron Lake.
“One of the things we discovered from sending out our letters is that some people didn’t even know the resort was planning to expand.”
The lack of communication about the project, both before the initial public hearing in July and since, is one of the sticking points for CARD. Only those living within 350 feet of the resort received notification about the initial meeting in July. Everyone else learned about the matter through word of mouth.
The notices for the July 18 public hearing arrived less than a week beforehand. The public notification followed all the legal rules but given that most members of the public are not familiar with the zoning process, the short notice and lack of information rankled many local residents.
“Other than an eight-by-eleven sheet, there was no information available to the public before that meeting,” Icenhour said. “Then meeting after meeting, the planning commission invited the developers to the table to talk, but where was our seat at the table? The residents of Fall Lake have been shut out after the commissioners stopped taking public comments after an hour on July 18.”
“The commissioners say that there will be no significant impacts but they don’t know that without studying it. That’s why we wanted an environmental assessment, to provide the information that’s missing.”
Icenhour contends the county board is allowing the development to proceed without adequate information on the impact to the community. “Even if there were no boats, the traffic on the road is still a problem, as is the septic system and water supply issues,” she said. “Just saying there are no impacts without studying if there are impacts is not appropriate. Even their own traffic engineer advised them to do further study.”