$300 million Clough Island proposal back on the front burner

A developer’s revised plan to turn 370-acre Clough Island into an upscale neighborhood in Superior with an 18-hole golf course is back on track after a two-year hiatus.

After meeting with representatives of Northwood Oaks, LLC in early April, Mayor David Ross and Jeff Vito, the city’s public works director, expressed support for the beefed-up proposal.

The Twin Cities-based developer has switched regulatory consultants and is ready to move forward, they said.

If built, the Clough Island project, now estimated at about $300 million, will become the city’s largest-ever residential addition to its tax base.

“We’re seeing a renewed interest by the investors to get this project rolling,” Ross said. “They’re moving to get the issues addressed. Our role is to try to step up to the plate and help them. The city of Superior will have to look at what we can do with the infrastructure that they’re going to need.”

The island has no electricity, sewer and other utility service.

Vito said the preliminary plans — with a price tag that’s risen above 2003 estimates of about $225 million — include a five-star hotel, a pedestrian ferry to transport residents from mainland parking lots to their homes on the island where no cars will be allowed, and a gondola connecting the island to Duluth’s Spirit Mountain.

“They’re dreaming big,” Vito said.

The homes will be expensive and the development’s golf course will be designed by a top professional, he said.

One of the partners in Northwood Oaks is Duluth real estate investor and businessman James Whiteside, whose family owned Clough Island from 1904 until 2002. Whiteside’s partnership bought the island from the family trust for a reported $1.2 million, outbidding the Nature Conservancy, which wanted to maintain the virtually undeveloped island as a nature sanctuary.

Northwood Oaks and Whiteside also are involved in the Crystal Village housing development in the Duluth Heights neighborhood, where custom-crafted, executive homes sell in the $400,000 to $800,000 range.

Whiteside did not return a telephone inquiry for this article.

Since 1956, Clough Island (also known as Whiteside Island and Big Island) has been virtually devoid of human habitation. Before then, the Whiteside family operated a farm there. In the ensuing years, it has served as virtual public property, hosting mostly hikers and campers. It’s one of the last remaining places in the St. Louis River estuary with long stretches of unaltered shoreline, the kind of habitat crucial for young fish and certain types of birds.

The developers have not yet filed for regulatory permits, but when they do they will have a long road to negotiate. The location within the environmentally sensitive river estuary, and the proposed construction of a small bridge from the mainland for emergency and golf cart-type vehicles will require permits from the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources (DNR), U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the city and possibly the U.S. Coast Guard.

Ross will do everything he can to help.

“It would be a wonderful addition to Superior because it would lie within our city limits and would help our tax base,” he said. “It has a lot of obstacles, but I believe when the investors decide to bring it to a more public level, we’re certainly going to help them. I make no apologies for a development like this, even though it’s in an environmentally sensitive area.”

Northwood Oaks probably has work ahead to win over environmentalists.

The St. Louis River has a long history of industrial pollution and invasion by non-native species, and any project that threatens to reduce dwindling native habitat likely will encounter resistance.

One group that looked at the proposal two years ago was the St. Louis River Citizens Action Committee (CAC), a group set up to help implement the St. Louis River System Remedial Action Plan. The plan was developed in the early 1990s by the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency and the Wisconsin DNR to address the sources of contamination in the river.

CAC Co-chairman Phil Monson said the group does not take sides on controversial issues, but serves as a forum for competing interests. He said one of the biggest challenges in restoring the ecological health of the estuary has been its loss of natural shoreline over time.

“The St. Louis River has lost a fair amount of natural shoreline through dredging and filling,” Monson said. “The changes in the shoreline around the estuary have impacted it considerably. So Clough Island, which hasn’t changed at all, is important.”

He said several types of wading birds like herons and the endangered piping plover use the shallow bay shoreline areas. The shorelines also are important as nurseries for fish, providing young fry with places to hide and collect food.

“Clough Island is not a potential nesting area for birds, as are areas along Minnesota Point and Wisconsin Point, but it has been maintained as a natural shoreline since people started living here,” Monson said. “When you look at the piping plover, it comes up here to nest, and a big part of its downfall has been loss of habitat.”

Vito said meetings with the developers convinced him they want to preserve the unique environmental aspects of the island, and will use that as a selling point. “They’re designing it to have minimal impact on the shoreline,” he said.