One billionaire’s wife, Kathy Cargill, was not trying to make friends or influence people in the tiny community of Park Point in Duluth, Minnesota.
After buying up several houses in the small community, for purposes unknown to the residents, her response to residents’ queries regarding her intentions earned her national attention — for all the wrong reasons.
As reported in The Wall Street Journal, Cargill originally paid $2.5 million for a home in Park Point, a neighborhood of beach houses along the coast of Lake Superior.
And her purchase raised little concern among the residents until she began buying up more properties unconnected to that original house.
Not only did she buy around 20 different properties, but she began bulldozing those properties without explanation, letting rumors run rampant as to her overarching purpose in Park Point.
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Who Is Kathy Cargill? Billionaire James Cargill II’s Wife Buys Multiple Houses In Duluth Upsetting Localshttps://t.co/MJ8WLgJYdY
— TIMES NOW (@TimesNow) March 25, 2024
Therefore, in February, the newly elected mayor of Duluth, Roger Reinert, decided to send her a letter asking her to explain her overall plans to the residents.
Should Kathy Cargill apologize to Park Point residents?
Cargill, as it happened, did not take kindly to what most would agree was a reasonable request.
As Cargill later said in an interview, “I think an expression that we all know — don’t pee in your Cheerios — well, he kind of peed in his Cheerios right there, and definitely I’m not going to do anything to benefit that community.”
Apparently, what she meant by the crude metaphor was, since Reinert and the locals had the audacity to ask her what she was doing in buying up all those properties, they ended up ruining her magnanimous plans for Park Point.
Which was an awfully bold thing to say to residents who merely wanted to know what was going on.
Moreover, when a local reporter found Cargill to ask her about her acquisitions, she told him, “The homes that we bought were pieces of crap. I couldn’t imagine living in any of them.”
Well, if Cargill wanted to endear herself to the Park Point community, she had a mighty strange way of going about it.
Indeed, later in The Wall Street Journal piece, she told the paper, “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. There’s another community out there with more welcoming people than that small-minded community.”
Per the Journal she was planning ” to build homes for some of her relatives, put in small-scale natural areas, fund improvements to the city park, open a coffee shop and build a complex for pickleball, basketball and street hockey.”
Reinert has not yet publicly commented on the whole debacle.
But, according to local news outlet The Star Tribune he did. He posted a photo of a lone pancake on the social media platform X, with the caption “For the record … I’m more of a pancake guy.”
For the record . . . I’m more of a pancakes guy. #IYKYK
Fueling up to get out with our plow drivers for a 3AM ride-along. Heaviest snowfall overnight, then lighter tomorrow, then heavy again Tuesday am.
PS: Help our plow drivers out and move those cars by 8pm tonight! pic.twitter.com/VRPUFEQxfq
— Roger Reinert (@RogerForDuluth) March 24, 2024
Now, the problem was not Cargill’s plans.
As some residents interviewed by the Journal said, Cargill seemed to buy up these properties with good intentions — helping her family and the community.
However, Park Point is very much a small-town community.
Everyone in Park Point knows each other and what is happening locally, so Cargill’s secrecy on the matter, of course, would arouse concern, even suspicion.
She initially received almost no pushback from the locals — all they did was ask what she was doing, and that was enough to make her fly off the handle.
Again, there was nothing inherently wrong with Cargill’s project.
Instead, she should have realized that, if she wanted to implement her large-scale project in such a tight-knit, community, she needed to have the trust of the residents.
She shouldn’t have insulted them and their houses when all they wanted to know was why she was buying up so many houses and promptly bulldozing them.
It certainly wasn’t a great way to ingratiate herself within the local community, to say the least.
