Padlocking her plans
Billionaire’s spat with locals over 20 homes
The wife of a Minnesota billionaire and member of America’s fourth-richest family is lashing out at locals worried about her scooping up homes in their neighborhood, and now vows to not help the “small-minded community.”
Kathy Cargill — the spouse of billionaire James Cargill II, one of the heirs to food-industry behemoth Cargill Inc. — started raising eyebrows over the past year after splurging about $2 million on 10 homes in Park Point, a picturesque neighborhood along a 7-mile-long Lake Superior sandbar in Duluth.
She then bought at least another 10 homes, bulldozing many of them.
‘Small-minded’
But after receiving backlash from locals worried about her unspoken specific plans for the properties — homes she dubbed “pieces of crap” — Cargill slammed her neighbors as ingrates and canceled all her reputed ideas to help better the area.
“The good plans that I have down there for beautifying, updating and fixing up Park Point park or putting up that sports court, forget it,” the billionaire told The Wall Street Journal over the weekend. “There’s another community out there with more welcoming people than that smallminded community.”
Cargill had generally said she was going to build houses for her relatives in the neighborhood where she has a vacation home, with plans to also install a coffee shop as well as courts for pickleball, basketball and street hockey in Park Point Park.
Those plans are now out the window because of her neighbors’ comments, she said.
“I think an expression that we all know — don’t pee in your Cheerio — well, he kind of peed in his Cheerios right there, and definitely I’m not going to do anything to benefit that community,” she said of local critics.
Cargill also vowed to keep her specific plans for the properties “even more private” after her neighbors demanded transparency over the future of the sites of the bulldozed homes.
The plan to keep her neighbors in the dark came after Duluth Mayor Roger Reinert penned a letter last month asking her to reveal her plans to city officials.
“So like many in Duluth, I am also concerned about all the Cargill purchases on Park Point,” Reinert said in a video statement mid-March.
“We now know that over 20 homes have been purchased . . . I think we’re all just wondering, you know, what is the plan?”
Reinert did not respond to The Post’s request for comment on Cargill’s vow not to divulge her plans.
‘Not going anywhere’
Danny O’Neil, a longtime resident of Park Point who sold his modest $370,000 home to Cargill for more than double its value, told The Post earlier this year that she had plans to convert his home into an abode for her grandson.
It remains unclear if Cargill hopes to move her wealthy relatives to Park Point, but she has made it clear that she is there to stay.
“Those people aren’t running me out. They can posture themselves all they want, but I’m not going anywhere,” she told the Journal.