Owners of a resort near Ely, Minn., said they’ve ended plans for 49 new cabins on an entry lake to the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness after the state sued them and the Lake County Planning Commission over shoreline protection rules.
Sandy Hoff, a co-owner of the Silver Rapids Resort, said by email that he and his partners don’t have any additional plans for the site yet and are still waiting for a judge to formally dismiss the state’s lawsuit.
The Planning Commission had given the century-old fishing resort on Farm Lake a permit this fall to build the cabins as part of a $45 million expansion project that also would renovate a motel and restaurant on-site and increase the size and number of docks.
The Minnesota Department of Natural Resources (DNR) repeatedly objected to the project, warning the planning board that it would violate the county’s own shoreline development rules that restrict the resort to a smaller footprint.
The agency asked a district judge in a suit filed Oct. 3 to throw out the resort’s permit for the construction.
A few weeks after the lawsuit was filed, Hoff and Silver Rapids “surrendered” the permit, entering into an agreement with Lake County to relinquish it and all development rights it granted. Now they have asked Judge Eric Hylden to dismiss the lawsuit.
But the DNR wants the case to continue.
The agency argued that merely surrendering the permit is not enough to make sure the issue won’t come up again should Silver Rapids or another developer try to exceed the county’s density limits. The county and Silver Rapids have not committed to following shoreline development rules and have not conceded that the proposed expansion project would have broken those rules, the agency said.