Amid mortgage foreclosure and fraud allegations, Endi Plaza owner files for bankruptcy

Is Duluth on some kind of list that tells scammers where they should come and do business?

Due diligence is a foreign concept to the people that greenlight these decisions.

After Roger’s comment yesterday at the big press event for the old Central site, he stated in the DNT piece from today, “This is exactly why we want TIF financing.” “There’s no greater example in our community of the ‘but for’ test,” he asserted, referring to the principle that TIF should be used only in instances where development would not otherwise occur, but for the subsidy being offered.”

The mayor is clearing saying that the City is willing to defer taxes for 26 years to build anything in Duluth. This should bring lots of developers to Duluth. The issue is that, in order to maintain what we have along with all the new infrastructure, ALL of our taxes will go up even more over time. And the City will need more from the state to stay alive.

Other communities use TIFs more responsibly, yet Duluth just keeps kicking the can down the road.

No wonder we’re living off state subsidies and have a special sales tax for our streets. The next time you see a councilor, ask them when they’re going to remove the half a percent sales tax to fix our streets, seeing that you’re handing out money to all these developers for no real reasons. And yes, we are handing out money because their super low property taxes are not helping the City maintain public infrastructure at all for 26 years.

The Star Tribune reported on this as well, and they mentioned “a preferred stock investor from Toronto put an unauthorized restrictive covenant on the property. What does this mean?

Very interesting. thanks for this perspective.