Judge calls city’s bluff: Minneapolis cannot issue variance to build on protected Mississippi River shore

A Minneapolis man will not be allowed to build a new home on a protected bluff of the Mississippi River, a district court judge ruled in a blow to the city of Minneapolis.

City Council members improperly tried to give the homeowner, Andrew Wattenhofer, an exemption to shoreline and bluff development rules over the objection of state regulators in the hope that Wattenhofer would eventually sell the property to the city’s park district, Judge Rachna Sullivan said in her February ruling.

“It could not be clearer” that council members voted to give the exemption after Wattenhofer agreed to the eventual land transfer, she wrote.

Wattenhofer has been trying for several years to tear down a two-car garage behind a riverfront duplex in Northeast Minneapolis, near the Lowry Avenue bridge, and replace it with a one-story house.

The bluff is far from pristine. It’s next door to a 93-year-old concrete plant that houses cement mixers and trucks in a parking lot that stretches to within a few feet of the river. It is two doors down from one of the city’s oldest lumber mills. The proposed 1,600-square-foot house would have a much smaller footprint than an apartment complex immediately to its north.

New structures have been banned within 40 feet of a Mississippi River bluff in Minneapolis since 1988, when Congress created a national recreation area along the river’s shorelines.

Wattenhofer first applied to the city for a variance that would allow him to build on the lot in 2021. The City Council denied that request after the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources and National Park Service objected.

He resubmitted his request in the spring of 2023 to a new City Council. The proposal was almost unchanged from the one rejected two years earlier. In addition to the DNR and Park Service objections, the city planning commission denied the variance, saying the property was long enough that he could build the house on the site and still comply with the 40-foot buffer.

Wattenhofer appealed to the City Council later that year, pointing to the concrete plant, lumber mill and apartment complex next door. He argued that any damage to the bluff that the protections hoped to prevent had already been done.

“The view from the water cannot get worse than it is today,” he wrote.

He also told council members that he wanted to enter into an agreement with the city’s park district, saying he would offer the land for sale to the district for use as a park if or when he decided to move from the property.

Council members are not allowed to grant a shoreline development variance based on whether the owner will one day sell the land to the city. But that seemed to be the deciding factor, Sullivan said in her ruling.

“No other reasons were discussed ... in nearly as much depth,” she wrote.

Lisa Goodman, a council member at the time, had even said just before voting that because the agreement to eventually transfer the land to the park district was “exactly what the committee asked for” she was “going to move approval of the variance appeal.”

The council voted unanimously to give Wattenhofer the variance.

Regulators with the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources sued the city to stop the development, saying that allowing the small home to go up would set a bad precedent for the state’s Mississippi River bluff protections, opening the door for homes, mansions and apartments to be built throughout a protected 72-mile stretch of the river. The building would also permanently alter the area, removing vegetation and habitat in “one of the few remaining bluffs in the area,” the DNR argued in its lawsuit.

DNR officials said in a statement that they are pleased the court agreed to block the development.

“The Minnesota DNR takes very seriously its responsibility to protect the bluffs and shorelands of Minnesota’s public waters,” the statement read.

A city spokeswoman said that both Minneapolis and Wattenhofer have the right to appeal, but no decision has been made.

Wattenhofer said in an email that he is still sorting out what will happen next.

The ruling marks the third time in the last 18 months that the DNR has successfully sued a local government for failing to enforce shoreline development rules. It sued the city of Fairmont in 2023 after City Council members tried to issue a permit for a restaurant to build a new dock and lakefront patio over the objections of the DNR. The city agreed to withdraw the permit a few months later.

The agency also sued Lake County officials in October after they had tried to allow a resort to build 49 new cabins on an entry lake to the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness. The county and resort dropped plans for the development shortly thereafter.