TOWER— For the first time since the city of Tower began work to re-create the community’s historic harbor more than two decades ago, a developer is proposing to implement the original vision for that project as outlined in the city’s 2007 master plan.
The Tower Economic Development Authority (TEDA) gave the green light last Thursday to a proposal by Tower Vision 2025 to construct a mixed-use development, including ground floor commercial space and upper floor condominium units. The proposal was one of two that TEDA had received in response to a Request for Proposals the board had issued late last year. The other had proposed a twin home development on the site.
The approval of the Tower Vision 2025 proposal is conditional. The development group will have a short window of opportunity, about 45 days, to show that they have the financial capacity to undertake the project. TEDA will detail the financial information it will be requesting in a resolution to be considered at their June 1 regular meeting.
While some on the board expressed considerable doubts about the ability of Tower Vision 2025 to fund its proposal, in the end all agreed to give them the opportunity to “show the money.”
If the firm doesn’t have funding in place in short order, TEDA will explore other options for developing the site.
The proposal outlined to the TEDA board last month calls for the construction of two buildings, each of which would contain 24 condominium apartments, ranging from two-bedrooms to efficiency studios. Final pricing is not in place, but initial estimates put the smaller units at well under $200,000. The buildings would incorporate a look reminiscent of some Scandinavian waterfronts, with brighter colors and pitched roofs, although the plan also proposes a large rooftop patio that would allow for outdoor dining and other activities for residents and guests.
The buildings, as proposed, would provide garage space in back for some of the units and commercial space on the harbor-side ground floor. During a presentation to the board last month, project lead Orlyn Kringstad said the units will be modular, which will allow for flexibility in sizing commercial spaces. He said some of the ground floor spaces could be converted to residential units depending on demand for commercial space.
The Tower Vision 2025 proposal is being led by Orlyn Kringstad, a former Tower mayor who had initially led the effort by Tower Harbor Shores to develop town homes at the harbor. That project suffered a series of setbacks, including delays due to the city’s lack of clear title to the site as well as pandemic-related inflation of construction costs. Other members of Kringstad’s team include Meyer Group Architects, out of Duluth, and contractor Shawn Webster, of Webster’s Northland Construction. Jeremy Schoenfelder, an experienced developer based in Arizona, will serve as consulting master developer on the project.
The city of Tower had endeavored for more than a decade to encourage private development at the harbor that would fit the vision outlined in its master plan, developed by a ten-member harbor committee established in 2006. Approval of the master plan had come only after substantial community input through a series of open houses that highlighted the ideas the committee was generating. That input was overwhelmingly supportive of the plan.
The city, after resolving its title questions with the creation of a new plat for the site in 2021, handed responsibility for advancing a project at the site to TEDA.
TEDA executive director Marshall Helmberger, who served on the original harbor committee that developed the 2007 master plan, noted that TEDA now had an obligation to get “the most bang for the bucks the city invested in the harbor.” He estimated the city had spent in excess of $10 million since it started work to bring new development to the harbor and said bringing that original vision to reality was one of his top goals when he took on the job of executive director of TEDA. “I hope that all that excitement and money spent that we don’t have to simply throw up our hands and say it was a pipe dream,” he said. “We’ve waited 20 years to bring this kind of development to the harbor. I think we can wait 45 days to see if Tower Vision can actually pull this off.”