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A hometown newspaper with a local office, local owners & lots of local news
The Hotel Solem building has seen better days since it was first built in 1919, with a 1923 addition. The city would like to acquire or condemn the three-story building and work to get an entity to refurbish it.
The hotel as it looked shortly after being one of the first buildings erected in Cloquet after the 1918 Fires, before a later addition.
See the Hotel Solem in these 1961 July Fourth parade photos
The goal of declaring the former Mexico Lindo restaurant building a "vacant and hazardous substandard building" is not to demolish the historic structure, community development director Holly Hansen told the Cloquet City Council. Rather, it is to attract responsible ownership to repair and revitalize the building in the heart of downtown.
When Cloquet city councilors voted unanimously to declare the building hazardous last week, they also set a public hearing for Feb. 1, as the next step toward acquisition - "via purchase or condemnation" - of the three-story building at 915 Cloquet Avenue.
This isn't the first time the Hotel Solem building at the corner of Cloquet Avenue and Tenth Street has been in dire need of repairs.
In 2001, the building was in foreclosure after a small interior fire displaced its 13 low-income residents. The city purchased the building in 2002 from Wells Fargo Bank for $67,500 and also settled a lien. In September 2003, the city sold the building in an "as is" condition to the current owners, Carlos Villareal and Felipe Mata, who opened the Mexico Lindo restaurant on the ground floor. At the time, there was no plan to renovate or reuse the upper two floors of the building, although the new owners did make repairs to the roof.
For nearly two decades, the building was home to a thriving restaurant and helped spark further revitalization of the downtown area. But a lack of maintenance is now catching up with the 102-year-old building.
In March and July 2020, building official Matt Munter found the roof was leaking and some brick walls were deteriorating. Photos show ceiling stains and a drain pipe redirecting water through a window on the north side of the building, plus areas of brick on the east wall adjacent to Ninth Street bulging/shifting, and the mortar is deteriorating. An order to repair was issued in January 2021.
Villareal is deceased and Mata lives out of the area. Repeated efforts by the city to reach Mata have not garnered a response, according to city documents.
In October of this year, the tenants operating Pedro's restaurant on the ground floor moved to a new location two blocks away, and continued their successful restaurant business there. Since then, the gas has been turned off to 915 Cloquet Avenue, then the city shut off water and sewer. In November, the city revoked the certification of occupancy for the building.
A storied history
Hans Andreas Jacobsen Solem was one of the first Cloquet businessmen to undertake permanent rebuilding after the 1918 fires, helping the city rise from the ashes with his investment.
Six months after fire burned down most of Cloquet, the former proprietor of the Oswald boarding house began construction in February 1919 on a new hotel building on the former site of the Sons of Norway Lodge. The new brick hotel - offering 32 rooms and two street-level storefronts - was completed in June 1919. "This half of the hotel was built with wooden beams as steel was not available due to World War I," detailed a document in the Carlton County Historical Society archives.
Four years later, Solem began work to add another 24 rooms, including eight with private baths and another two storefronts adding up to 100 feet of frontage along Cloquet Avenue. Former historical society director Marlene Wisura surmised that Hotel Solem was probably for business people and considered "a luxury hotel" for its time.
By this century, things had changed. The building had been converted into 50 efficiency apartments for low-income residents before a fire damaged the upper floors in November 2000.
There would be no more tenants in Hotel Solem and the fire damage has yet to be repaired.
What's next?
The public hearing set for 6 p.m. Feb. 1 at Cloquet City Hall will center around the purchase or condemnation of the building.
The owners of the building (and their successors) have 20 days to respond to the council's resolution, either by disputing the resolution or accepting the offer to buy the building.
The appraised value of the property, according to the resolution, is $8,000. According to the resolution, city or EDA officials would prefer to negotiate purchase at that price, but also could take it through the courts. The Economic Development Department has the funds and authority to pay for acquiring the property, which has partially unpaid taxes for the second half of 2021, Hansen said.
According to the Dec. 22 council resolution - and state statute - the city could proceed with obtaining the property "by judgement of the District Court through condemnation proceedings" with the goal of transferring ownership to a contractor to perform the necessary repairs and redevelopment.
"The situation we have right now is the conditions on the second and third floor and the roof and the brick and the exterior need a responsible owner that cares about building in this community and wants to renovate and occupy that," Hansen told the council.
After the hearing, the council would be asked to move forward to acquire the property, Hansen said. The process could take up to six months if they have to go through the courts.
"The EDA exists to enable rehabilitation where opportunities exist and has programs to support that," Hansen said.
