Kathy Cargill shifts course on Park Point, puts several properties up for sale

DULUTH – Kathy Cargill, who became a household name in Duluth when her company purchased and demolished a dozen Park Point homes in recent years, is now selling nearly half of the properties on the 6-mile sandbar.

Three properties on the Lake Superior side of the point that separates the lake and the mouth of the St. Louis River have been consolidated into one listing. There are three for sale on the side of the Duluth-Superior Harbor, two as bare land and one with a house. Altogether, their listings total $2.7 million.

Cargill is the wife of an heir to the Cargill company’s fortune who made headlines last year for her Park Point spending spree and public row with Mayor Roger Reinert. Her move to sweep up several Park Point properties rankled residents concerned about her intentions for this unique stretch of the city.

“I think it’s a positive development; we’ve got a housing crisis,” neighbor Alan Dartanyan said of the listings.

He lives in a bungalow near one of the demolished homes, and hopes the lots will lead to newly built houses and an end to the “eyesore” temporary fencing installed around the properties.

In late 2022, 2023 and 2024, a limited liability company run by Cargill called North Shore LS purchased property after property, many for twice their estimated market value. Sales included 13 homes and nearly two dozen parcels.

The Lakes Sotheby’s International Realty listings appear to be the first move Cargill has made with the properties in more than a year, since erecting that fencing and “private property” signs. It is unclear why she is now selling some of them.

Some residents of the point, officially known as Minnesota Point, worried what the purchases will do to property taxes. St. Louis County officials have said most of the Cargill purchases were considered atypical because they weren’t publicly listed. That means those sales weren’t included in property value assessments for 2025. But taxes could increase in the future, depending on the value of homes built and then sold in arm’s-length transactions.

Home sales on the point from the summer of 2023 to 2024 are about equal to the number sold for the same period through July 31 of this summer, when removing from the equation the number of homes Cargill bought, said Karen Pagel Guerndt, past president of the Lake Superior Area Realtors association.

The median price of Park Point homes sold this past year grew from $520,000 to $665,000, however, along with the average number of days on the market — from four to 49.

Pagel Guerndt attributed that partly to a balancing of the market.

With development plans unknown, many have also worried about the sandbar’s fragile ecosystem, and residents and city leaders lament the loss of badly needed single-family housing.

After declining to speak with local reporters, Cargill eventually told the Wall Street Journal that along with homes for relatives, she had intended to help the city by making green space improvements, building a coffee shop and a sport court for pickleball, basketball and street hockey.

Cargill said she’d changed course because Duluth is a “small-minded community,” and Reinert had “peed in his Cheerios.”

The lakeside land with an address of 1301 S. Lake Ave., is listed for $850,000 and is already under contract. She paid $1.7 million for the three homes formerly on those properties. Two other Minnesota Avenue properties sold as bare land are listed for $575,000 and $499,900, which she paid $465,000 and $405,000 for, respectively. A house on the harbor side, which she bought for $655,000, is listed for $799,900 and has a sale pending. Each are zoned for residential use.

Terry Slattery, 71, has lived on the point all his life, and is now across the street from the lakeside property. He’s never had a problem with Cargill buying properties on Park Point, he said, but is worried a new buyer might put in several townhomes near him.