A multi-year debate over the zoning classification of the Ours Resort in Lutsen seems to have been put to rest. Neighbors of the 5.13-acre parcel on Lake Superior have been trying to convince the county to change it from its resort commercial/residential classification to its former residential status.
The Minneapolis Meat Cutter’s Union has owned the property since 1978 and rents it out to its members at affordable rates. Six structures serve as guest cabins and one is a caretaker’s residence. The union worked with the county at various times as it made improvements to the property.
In 2007 the Cook County Planning and Zoning Department recognized a need to reconcile the property’s zoning designation with the actual use of the property. After considering the issues involved in the historic use of the property, the county board designated the property resort commercial/ residential. Neighbors hired attorney Richard Swanson to challenge that decision.
The issue has been debated since then and is one that future property owners could face if they pursue upgrades to aging structures.
This February, Swanson sent a letter to the Planning Commission asking them to recommend returning the property to its former classification.
In his letter, Swanson said the union “has bootstrapped its way from a property with a family residential ‘retreat’ to a full-blown resort commercial zoning without any legal authority. …The property is not a commercial resort as defined under state law, rather it is not open to the public and is limited to use by members of the union and their guests.”
“The county seems to want to eliminate the nonconforming use by changing the zoning so that the use fits,” Swanson wrote. “The rezoning to RC/R opens the door to a future full-scale resort operation with an entirely different impact in the middle of this residential area. The county has lost control for no good reason, and that concerns the neighbors.”
Permitted uses for resort commercial/ residential properties include grocery stores, restaurants, Laundromats, general stores, gasoline sales, and gift shops. Swanson said that while Planning Director Tim Nelson had argued that the site doesn’t lend itself to much expansion due to space and septic site limitations, use of the property could become much more intense.
Nelson responded with a memo of his own to the Planning Commission. “According to the president of the Minneapolis Meat Cutter’s and Food Handler’s Union, Raymond Sawicky, members who wish to stay at the resort must make reservations through the main office and pay the respective lodging rates established for each cabin,” he wrote. “Its resort ‘use’ is indistinguishable from other small-scale commercial resorts.”
Nelson argued that the fact that the resort may have been operating outside the parameters of its zoning when it was classified as residential “does not automatically forever ban the county from determining that the use in question may indeed be in harmony with the comprehensive land use guide plan, and rezone that property accordingly….”
Nelson does not think a more intense use of the property will happen. “…Theaccumulation of the Cook County zoning, subdivision, septic, and storm water ordinances, along with all of the other environmental rules such as with wetlands, the North Shore Management Plan, etc., provide more than sufficient control to unrestricted development,” Nelson wrote. “Routinely, development projects are either scrapped altogether or scaled down significantly, and rarely are able to achieve their full build-out allowance, all due to insufficient septic treatment capacity. Such is the case with the ‘Ours Resort’ property.”
In a document written January 29, Nelson concluded that “the current resort operation conforms very well with the provisions of the Cook County Comprehensive Land Use Guide Plan that were considered in the 2007 rezone process.”
After the Planning Commission reconsidered the matter at the request of the county board, they recommended keeping the zoning as it is.
Attorney Swanson told the county board he thought it was ironic that an illegal use was turned into a legal use.
If the illegal use had been inconsistent with the county zoning ordinance, Nelson responded, the Planning Commission would not have gone this way. They could have enforced and stopped the illegal use or made it legal, and they decided to make it legal.
Commissioner Bruce Martinson said that the information that has been considered in this process makes it even more appropriate to zone the property as a resort.
A motion to go with the Planning Commission’s recommendation passed unanimously.
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