Authority slows pace on Solem development

After receiving a single proposal to redevelop the 103-year-old Hotel Solem in downtown Cloquet, the city’s economic development authority is pumping the brakes on the future of the condemned property.

“We’re putting it on hold for now,” said Holly Hansen, community development director.

Requests to redevelop the three-story building that was formerly Mexico Lindo were due late last year. One developer offered a proposal and another toured the site while offering to wait and see, Hansen said.

Hansen declined to get into specifics about the sealed proposal. Instead, she said it would be important to further educate the city council on development tools, and stressed a need to align city council goals with those of the economic development authority.

The EDA has no interest in the city continuing to own and maintain the building, Hansen said.

“The EDA is all about growing for-profit, private businesses,” she said. “Before we get too much further, we want to align and remind the council, ‘This is what need from you.’”

The building at the corner of Cloquet Avenue and 10th Street owns a rich and important history in Cloquet. Following the historic fire of 1918, the building rose luxuriously as a hotel and a sign of new beginnings in June 1919.

Former owners of the Mexican restaurant never updated the upper levels or basement of the facility, and made only cursory repairs to the roof. Last year, the city condemned the property and bought it from the former owners, following court-related proceedings, for $8,000.

Water leaks have compromised the exterior bricks and made renovation of the interior of the building daunting and costly, Hansen said.

The redevelopment of Hotel Solem comes at a time when Hansen’s office is also working on new culturally relevant signage along the St. Louis River, $4.9 million in broadband projects with Brainerd-based Consolidated Telephone Company, and utilizing federal brownfield grants to help clean up vacant industrial property within city limits.

“The bottom line is the building needs a lot of work,” Hansen said. “It’s a heavy lift and this is complicated, and we need to make sure there’s alignment as a city.”