Why a Billionaire Bought a Bunch of Homes in Duluth, Minnesota
Written by
Yaël Bizouati-Kennedy
Edited by
Chris Cluff
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Billionaire Kathy Cargill has recently been snapping up a bunch of houses in Duluth, Minn.
Yet, residents started to become concerned about her lack of transparency with her intentions and a battle of sorts ensued.
The wife of James R. Cargill II — heir to food behemoth Cargill and a member of America’s fourth-richest family — first bought a home for $2.5 million in what The New York Post deemed “a picturesque neighborhood along a 7-mile-long Lake Superior sandbar in Duluth.”
While this initially didn’t raise eyebrows, residents started to pay attention when she added a slew of additional homes.
“It’s just so sudden,” Dawn Buck, a resident, told The Wall Street Journal. “What happens is the house closes, then immediately the survey stakes go up and within a week the utilities are cut off and then real soon, here comes a bulldozer. Someone somewhere has a plan.”
Mayor Roger J. Reinert urged her to reveal her plan for the properties, to no avail.
“Park Point is a unique Duluth neighborhood, and geographically a place like no other in the world. The plan for these properties is unknown, and that is concerning to many — including me,” he said in a Facebook post.
Cargill told The Wall Street Journal “she didn’t think it was anybody’s business what she did with the properties” and her initial intentions were to help improve the neighborhood, open a coffee shop and build a complex for pickleball, basketball and street hockey.
But this is all out of the window at this point.
“The good plans that I have down there for beautifying, updating and fixing up Park Point Park or putting up that sports court, forget it. There’s another community out there with more welcoming people than that small-minded community,” she told The Wall Street Journal.
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