Lutsen Resort owner charged with arson, insurance fraud in North Shore resort fire

After nearly two years of speculation and denial, Lutsen Resort owner Bryce Campbell has been charged with arson and insurance fraud in the blaze that destroyed the historic, treasured lodge once nestled along Lake Superior.

Calling it a “crime of selfishness,” state Bureau of Criminal Apprehension Superintendent Drew Evans said Thursday that Campbell “put his interests above the livelihood of his employees, the safety of the people that were in the building at the time ... and all of the Minnesotans that loved Lutsen Lodge for generations across our state.”

According to a criminal complaint, Campbell had been inside the lodge around the time the fire began early Feb. 6, 2024, and had often made jokes about burning it down. Investigators found that Campbell had searched online for ways to start fires, and they found evidence of an accelerant that he had researched where the fire originated in the basement near boilers.

Campbell had increased the insurance policy on the resort by about $4.5 million since 2022, to $13 million, the complaint said.

Campbell, a Canadian citizen, was arrested without incident in Michigan, officials said.

Lutsen Resort billed itself as the state’s oldest, in operation for nearly 140 years. The lodge that burned was built in 1952, after fire destroyed two previous iterations.

The 2024 fire destroyed the wood structure, leaving only two chimneys standing and taking three days to extinguish.

Shortly after the fire, people speculated on social media that he was behind the blaze. Defending himself, he told the Minnesota Star Tribune last year that he had nothing to do with it.

“My heart is broken, and I feel like I’m grieving a person,” Campbell wrote to the Star Tribune then. “You have no idea what it’s like to lose such a big piece of your life [that] my mom and I were building together ... It makes my broken heart hurt even more to focus on such absurd accusations.”

Campbell wrote that he had invested millions of dollars in improvements to the three-story lodge, so “you don’t [expletive] torch a place and burn up $5 million of your money ... Let’s use some common sense here, people.”

Campbell said he had plans to rebuild.

The complaint says that on the night of the fire, surveillance video from nearby businesses and a Cook County patrol car video showed the SUV Campbell was driving near Lutsen just before and after the fire started.

The complaint also says Campbell searched for information on glycol, a type of alcohol, and its flammability after it leaked from a boiler in January. He also searched for Swissmar, a type of accelerant. Such residue was found on one of the water heaters and a gas valve in the resort’s basement after the fire.

A text message Campbell sent to his husband days before the fire said “just burn it,” in response to his husband’s message about $466,000 owed to the Canada Revenue Agency.

Less than a week before, the resort’s general manager emailed Campbell saying they didn’t have enough money to make payroll the next week. The complaint also details unpaid bills and a bank looking to sever its relationship with Campbell.

He submitted an insurance claim for a total loss the day of the fire, which eventually amounted to $16.5 million. He cited “a fire of unknown origin,” the complaint says.

State Fire Marshal Dan Krier said that at one point, 10% of his department was working on the fire site. During the investigation, he learned how cherished the resort had been to North Shore residents and visitors.

Dick Nelson’s great-grandfather built the original resort in the mid-1880s, and descendants of the Nelson family ran it until 1988, when it was sold to Bill Burns, Nancy Burns and Scott Harrison.

Nelson, a local resident, said Thursday that driving by the roped-off entryway to where the lodge once stood, “feels sad. It always will ... All the history on the walls there … you can’t recreate that. But justice has been served, and that part is wonderful.”

His daughter and scores of others were married at the resort and celebrated anniversaries and family vacations there.

“We’re sick about it,” Nelson said.

John Trettel owned a condo in the association across the Poplar River next to the resort. He and others long had issues with Campbell, he said, who “came in and destroyed one of the top properties on the planet.”

St. Paul architect Edwin H. Lundie designed the Mesaba Red U-shaped lodge, with its prominent brick chimney, massive hand-hewn posts and beams carved from centuries-old White Pine and a huge fireplace made from local stone. The original lodge was destroyed by fire in 1948, rebuilt and destroyed by fire again in 1951.

The 2024 resort fire was the second major fire in the Lutsen area in less than a year, with Papa Charlie’s destroyed by fire in 2023. There were also two fires in Grand Marais in recent years, including a beloved restaurant. Lutsen Resort’s historic covered bridges were also destroyed during a storm in 2022.

Campbell ran afoul of the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources after repairing one bridge without a permit. In 2024 he also lost operation of another of his properties, Superior Shores Resort near Two Harbors, to a caretaker after he missed payments for the $15 million property.

Eleanor Hildebrandt and Christa Lawler of the Minnesota Star Tribune contributed to this story.