Cook County EDA Takes First Steps to Break Ties with Superior National Golf Course
Sep 05, 2024 07:34AM ● By Content Editor
By Joe Friedrichs for Boreal Community Media - September 4, 2024
LUTSEN – They loved it to death.
After a decades-long run that was supported, in part, by large sums of public money, the Cook County Economic Development Authority (EDA) is opening the door to selling the Superior National golf course. During a public meeting Aug. 20, the EDA Board of Directors voted to move forward with hiring an attorney to chart the steps to sell the golf course to a private entity.
During that meeting, Thom McAleer, a local business owner who is also on what’s known as the Board of Governors for Superior National, raised the notion of the course “being loved to death” through “the best of intentions.” Essentially, this means that people volunteered behind the scenes for little or no compensation to make the golf course function. Some of those people are no longer involved with the course, and others, by their own admission, are aging out. The people who potentially loved the course to death include Scott Harrison, formerly of Lutsen Resort. Other people who were instrumental in establishing and operating the golf course include former Superior National Superintendent Mike Davies and Cook County resident Mike Larson, McAleer said.
Larson has been involved with Superior National since before the first tree was cut down near the Poplar River to build the course. He walked the land with George Nelson Jr. in the late 1980s as the vision was laid out for a “destination golf course.” The fact that the course could be sold to a private entity causes Larson to have mixed emotions.
“It’s like marrying a daughter away,” Larson said. “You’re heartbroken in one sense, but happy at the same time.”
Despite the dedication of numerous Cook County residents, the golf course has been, at times, a challenge for the EDA. Staffing issues have been a consistent problem for the course, for example. Former EDA Director Theresa Bajda, whose final meeting with the organization was Aug. 20, said her job overseeing various aspects of the course consumed nearly 40 percent of her workload during her one year with the local organization. These duties included financial management and planning, among other tasks. A comprehensive report that Bajda and Larson wrote and assembled this year states, “Superior National is chronically understaffed.”
According to the report, Superior National does not have a general manager, a human resource manager or staff, or a marketing team. Furthermore, the maintenance department is “understaffed by the equivalent of approximately eight full-time employees,” and the “clubhouse department was understaffed by the equivalent of approximately five full-time equivalent employees.”
“We’re one or two people away from catastrophic failure,” McAleer said of the golf course and the lack of adequate staffing. If, for example, golf pro Heath Ekstrom were to leave, the EDA Board agreed during the Aug. 20 discussion that the consequences could be disastrous for the course.
Superior National: Superior National golf course is currently owned by the EDA. Photo by Joe Friedrichs.
Bajda’s last day as EDA director was Aug. 30. When this reporter met with Bajda Aug. 28 to inquire about why she was resigning and the role the golf course had in her position, Bajda was careful not to put the blame on anyone or anything specifically, including the ongoing staffing woes at the golf course. However, she did acknowledge that it’s difficult for the EDA to best serve as the overseer of sorts at Superior National.
“Is the EDA best suited to own and operate this?” Bajda said. “My opinion would be no.”
The relationship between the EDA and the golf course has been an ongoing dilemma and conversation in Cook County for decades. In 2010, the EDA considered selling the course, which agitated former members, including the late Hal Greenwood.
“I’m outraged by it,” Greenwood said at that time. “I’m totally outraged by it. I’m sorry and apologize for it, but this really gets under my skin. It’s a beautiful asset to Cook County.”
Also in 2010, then-Grand Marais Mayor Sue Hakes said a committee made up of the EDA and county and city officials were trying to get their “arms around the scope of the problems at the EDA and that all options, including the sale of Superior National,” were on the table.
In 2011, the EDA hired former Cook County Commissioner Bob Fenwick to be the General Manager for Superior National. That arrangement, Larson said, was complicated. Around that same time, Mark Sandbo, then Chair of the Superior National Golf Course Committee, said, “The golf course is a drain financially and mentally on the EDA.” Nonetheless, a plan to sell the course failed to move forward.
Course in spring: Superior National offers golfers views of Lake Superior. Photo by Erik Dickes.
More than a decade later, the EDA is taking the first concrete steps toward selling the golf course. At the Aug. 20 meeting, the EDA hired Duluth-based attorney Fred Dudderar to chart the steps that would be required to sell the course. If it does go from a publicly held course to private ownership, the sale would include all “property and fixed assets (equipment, clubhouse, operating systems),” according to the EDA report. If it moves forward, sale proceeds and other possible concessions would be used to pay the remaining balance of bond obligations owed to the county, according to the EDA. In addition, a sale to private ownership would assume the golf course becomes taxable property in Cook County.
The roots of the local EDA are directly tied to the golf course in Lutsen. According to the report Bajda and Larson assembled, “The EDA was created by MN statute in 1988 to hold title for the land for the development of Superior National at Lutsen.” Since that time, the golf course in Lutsen “has never been a cash burden to Cook County,” according to information provided to the County Board last fall, “and the golf course management team took the fiduciary responsibility to operate in such a manner as the highest priority.” Officials from the golf course, including the “Board of Governors,” note the number of homes built near the golf course during the past two decades. According to information shared during a July 2023 work session of the County Board, “Since 2016, the development of properties around the golf course has generated over $1 million in new property tax revenues. These properties do not receive any services that are funded by local taxpayers. Road maintenance, snowplowing, water, and sewer are personal responsibilities of the property owners. There are 16 homes at (The Heritage), three under construction now and two more in 2024. All the lots have been sold.”
That said, it’s always been a complicated and complex arrangement in terms of who is actually running the golf course and making decisions about its present and future. In 2010, for example, the EDA appointed a five-member management board to run Superior National. That November, Cook County Commissioner Fritz Sobanja questioned who was managing the course.
“During my tenure as a commissioner, I’ve never really known who is running the golf course,” Sobanja said then. “And what authority is there for this five-member board to do something, versus whoever you’ve hired for a manager out there and what authority do they have? And then you have this ‘friends of the golf course group’, that is not official in any capacity, yet they are… they’re in there kind of almost acting like they are.”
Superior National was originally managed by something known as the “Recreation Management Company,” which functioned as an arm of the Lutsen-Tofte Tourism Association. After a significant course facelift launched in 2013, Visit Cook County stepped in and took over the EDA's annual debt obligation of $162,000. That money goes to the county through bond payments and the 1% lodging tax.
According to the EDA, approximately 14,000 rounds of golf are played each season at Superior National. The significant redesign of the course, which started in 2013 and was completed in 2018, raised expectations that the course would bring in 27,000 annual rounds of golf. It didn’t. Since 2018, the highest number of golf rounds played on the course was 14,526, a mere 54 percent of the projection from local officials. In other words, despite the public investment, including more than $3 million from the local sales tax pool of money, “such labor and capital budgets simply fell short of moving Superior National to a premier course on the ‘highly manicured side’ of the operation,” according to an update Larson shared with the County Board last year.
From late May through September, it costs $114 per person to play 18 holes of golf at Superior National. The course has three full-time employees. More than 40 seasonal employees are also hired during the peak season, according to golf course officials. The payroll for the golf course was approximately $587,000 in 2023. That figure increased by 41 percent in this year’s operating budget, or nearly $243,000, as the course “aims to address historical and chronic shortages of clubhouse and maintenance staff. It also addresses the recent local, regional and national increases in base wages,” according to the report from Larson and Bajda.
Mike Larson: Cook County resident Mike Larson has been involved with Superior National for decades. Photo by Joe Friedrichs.
Toward the end of the recent Labor Day weekend, Larson was among a handful of local residents enjoying a beautiful evening at Superior National. Larson, seated at a table outside the clubhouse overlooking the putting green, reflected on the course's past, present, and future. The plan to sell the golf course to a private entity is a “good thing,” Larson acknowledged. It would be a win for the EDA, he said, and for the county and Visit Cook County. More resources would be available for marketing the course under private ownership, Larson said, and more access to potential full-time employees, including through H-2B and J-1 visa programs. Furthermore, the county could tax the course if it is privately owned. A sale will also allow the EDA to devote more time to other entities and businesses in the name of community-wide economic development.
“The right thing to do is to sell the golf course,” Larson said.