Silver Rapids applications tabled for a second time

FALL LAKE- A two-hour Lake County Planning Commission meeting on Thursday ended with the commissioners tabling two zoning applications for the Silver Rapids Resort for a second time. The planning commission tabled the applications the first time on July 18 after a grueling three-hour, standing-room-only meeting, which was covered in the July 29 Timberjay.
None of the groups involved at the Aug. 8 meeting, the planning commission, the resort developers, and the area’s residents, left the meeting happy.
After tabling action on the two zoning applications, the planning commission scheduled a third meeting regarding the resort’s applications for Monday, Aug. 19, at 7 p.m. at the Law Enforcement Center in Two Harbors. Those unable to travel to Two Harbors can email planningandzoning@co.lake.mn.us to request a Zoom link for the meeting.
Contested applications
The issues involving the proposed resort conversion hinge on two zoning applications: a conditional use permit application for the operation of the reconfigured resort in a mostly rural residential area and a preliminary plat application for a planned unit development.
The developers propose to remove six of the 12 existing rental cabins, remove the RV sites, park homes, and tent sites from the property, and build a new lodge. The plan also calls for remodeling the motel and the remaining rental cabins, building 12 new docks and 49 new cabins.
The preliminary plat application is for the conversion of 22 of the resort’s 62 acres into a privately owned time-share cabin community, where owners buy a one-quarter share. According to materials submitted by the developers to Lake County, each of the cabins will have a footprint of over 1,602 square feet, including the deck and side stairs based on developer-provided plans provided at the meeting.
EAW petition
A petition to require an Environmental Assessment Worksheet was the reason many of the meeting attendees went home less than happy. After the first meeting on the resort project on July 18, residents organized with the help of the rural advocacy nonprofit CURE and submitted a petition on July 31 to the Minnesota Environmental Quality Board, or EQB, asking that an EAW be prepared for the resort makeover.
In a July 31 letter to Lake County, the EQB “determined that Lake County is the appropriate governmental unit to decide the need for an EAW.” According to Minnesota regulations, the planning commission cannot grant or deny the resort’s zoning applications until a decision is made on the petition. The developers, who want to begin work on renovating the aged resort, were less than thrilled over the delay.
Because the decision on the petition must come from the Lake County Board of Commissioners, the county has 30 working days — until Sept. 5 — from the receipt of the petition to make its determination. The planning commission will need to make a recommendation to the county commissioners on whether an assessment is needed before then.
The petitioners were unhappy that the EQB did not determine that an EAW was mandatory and that they must wait for the Lake County commissioners to decide the fate of the petition. They were also unhappy that the Lake County Environmental Services Department issued a formal determination dated Aug. 8 that the resort’s two applications “do not meet the thresholds for (mandatory) environmental review.”
Environmental services argued that the resort conversion did not exceed the density and unit thresholds for a mandatory assessment. “The department has determined that this application is different because the existing structures … will still be owned and operated by the resort; the areas that will be platted will have new structures with the opportunity to have densities closer to the zoning lot area requirements (one-acre minimum) and that would meet DNR shoreline structure setbacks.”
Environmental services made its determination based on revised preliminary plat applications which cut the five units of workforce housing in the original and revised downward the number of units built during the first of three phases of construction.
The planning commissioners appeared glum but resigned over the need to schedule a third meeting to consider the resort’s applications. The developers, who appeared keen to start work on the makeover of the resort, were unhappy over the delays.
Sandy Hoff, speaking on behalf of the developers, asked if they could get an expedited hearing on the applications after the petition issue was settled.
“I think we can make an expedited hearing, but if an EAW (is required), that’s a different question,” said Rich Sve, who is the county commissioner liaison to the planning commission, pointing out that expediting the applications was contingent on the fate of the petition.
Discretionary EAW
The county’s environmental services department provided additional “petition guidance” to the planning commission at the Aug. 8 meeting on how to determine if a discretionary EAW is needed. According to the county’s ordinances, that determination must be based on whether the project would create “significant environmental effects.”
According to Lake County Ordinance No. 8, Article 5, the county commissioners must consider the type, extent, and reversibility of any environmental effects, cumulative potential effects, and “The extent to which the environmental effects are subject to mitigation by ongoing public regulatory authority.”
The petition guidance noted that several factors could affect the county’s decision, including increased traffic, pedestrian safety, boat traffic, invasive species, water supply, docks, parking, impacts on residents and housing, and the nearby Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness.
The guidance concluded with a short summary of the EAW pros and cons. First, it noted that environmental concerns could be made into conditions instead of requiring a formal EAW. On the pro side, an EAW would provide transparency and better access for the public to any environmental studies and analysis. The downside would be the delays and drawn-out process of an EAW.
Missing information
After the July 18 meeting, Lake County Environmental Services Director Christine McCarthy provided the developers with a list of items the planning commission wanted them to address. The items the county requested were a formal response to the letter on the project from the county’s traffic engineer, snowmobile and ATV use, environmental assessment, water resources, hazardous materials and waste, a justification for the number of parking and “mooring sites,” the submission of a construction stormwater pollution prevention plan, congestion and safety at the boat ramp, pedestrian traffic, building setback distances on the top of the bluff, an alternative location for the beach bar and bathroom structure if the proposed building cannot obtain a zoning variance, a design showing the layout of the septic system retrofit for the first of the three phases of construction, and an aquatic invasive species prevention plan.
In response, the developers provided a written response to the traffic engineer letter, a “review of background information” on groundwater prepared by a consultant, a stormwater pollution prevention plan, a revised plan for the boat ramp and pedestrian traffic, updated plans showing clarified setback distances, and details on their aquatic invasive species prevention.
In addition to facilities at the boat ramp to “clean, drain, dry,” the resort will also educate its guests and fractional cabin owners on invasive species and respecting the integrity of the lakes.
“These owners will have an orientation, and they’ll have refreshers as things go by,” said Kate Williams, the resort’s operating manager, who described to the planning commission how the resort will “focus our programming on nature … and developing a love of the land.”
The developers will also remediate a fuel spill from a leaking underground fuel tank. “We are already working with the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency on the remediation of the brownfield (on the site),” said Alex Bushey, speaking on behalf of the resort. “And we have sent our clean-up plans to the county.”
Regarding ATV and snowmobile traffic, Bushey said, “Having a trail go past our lodge is a benefit to our property,” explaining that it was part of the resort’s business plan to “capture that traffic.”
Luke Sydow, the developer’s landscape architect, explained the situation with the docks, and confusion over the numbers of boats, slips, and docks. “I think that was a really big misconception in the previous plan. We heard numbers of 90 docks, that kind of stuff. We just wanted to verify that it was clearly not 90 docks. We’re proposing 27 docks.”
The resort will add 12 new docks to the 15 already in use, for a total of 27. This is a reduction from the 36 proposed in the original application.
“If we look at the number of docks, and we average that out by three boats per dock, because of the variety in size, we’re looking at 75 boats.”
Regarding traffic issues, the developers redesigned the boat ramp as a one-way and expressed their willingness to work with the county to manage pedestrian traffic. Regarding the rest of the traffic issues, Hoff stated, “I think that’s an ongoing discussion to make sure that we create a safe environment for everybody, but I think that could be a condition of approval that we all work to solve.”
280 versus 400
Issues of water supply, density, and traffic were less clear. The elephant in the room was not the 49 cabins or the new docks. The unspoken issue was the increased occupancy at the resort, which has a direct impact on water supply, wastewater generation, the amount of traffic in and out of the resort, and even the density calculations used to determine the thresholds for whether an environmental assessment is needed.
As stated in the petition guidance document, the current maximum occupancy of the resort is 280. After the proposed makeover is completed, the maximum occupancy will be around 400.
“There is a question about square footage of units,” the guidance document related. “The footprint of the (cabins) appears to be close to 1,500 square feet, but there are two stories so actual square footage is closer to 3,000. Number of units is based on habitable space of units, which did not include the lower level. Staff did not receive floor plans so actual square footage can’t be determined.” The document also noted that higher square footage would lower the permitted density of structures that could be built during the three proposed stages of construction.
Water supply
The developers’ response regarding the water supply needed for the increased occupancy at the resort seemed less than thorough. The planning commissioners stated at both the July 18 and Aug. 8 meetings that the resort’s water usage must not only meet the needs of its guests and fractional cabin owners, it must also not deprive the water supply in wells on neighboring properties.
The developers did not arrive at the Aug. 8 meeting with anything other than background information from their consultants. An analysis of the groundwater behavior of their well or of their proposed future well sites was not provided.
Bushey commented that “the water supply is adequate for phase one (of construction),” but that they wanted to put off groundwater tests until the second and third phases of resort conversion.
“We can assure the commissioners that a thorough analysis will be presented,” the developers stated in their written response to the county’s questions, “as we move forward with the development to assure the proposed facilities have sufficient water resources and that this project does not have a negative influence on surrounding properties.”