Welcome back to The Flyover, your daily digest of important, overlooked, and/or interesting Minnesota news stories.
OK, But What About the Fish?
On my first visit to Grand Marais in 2019, I (Em Cassel) took no fewer than a dozen photos of "that store with the fish sticking out of it," or, as it's more accurately known, the Beaver House building. The unforgettable downtown landmark on the corner of Broadway Avenue and Wisconsin Street opened as a tackle shop in the 1960s but closed its doors in 2024; owner Tyson Cronberg leased it to the city for use as a liquor store.
But here's some fun news from North Shore community radio station WTIP: Kaylee and Immanuel Thompson have purchased the Beaver House building from Crongberg, Kaylee’s father, and they have plans to transform it into a gift shop and burger restaurant called Beaver House Grill. The gift shop is slated to open next summer, with the burger restaurant opening in 2027.
Yes, yes, but what of the giant fish? We regret to inform you that its fate seems murky at best for now...
Two of the exterior projects yet to be finalized are the fate of the large walleye, created by artist Jim Korf, and the mural on the south side of the building, painted by Lyle Saethre.
Before any action is taken, the Thompsons said they want to hear from the community about how to use, repurpose, or preserve those historical pieces.
“So we’re going to actually ask the community a lot of questions and see what their feedback is before we make an ultimate decision on those,” Immanuel said.
Get your fish defendin' outrage ready, residents of Grand Marais!
The Town That Lost Its Will to Live
If you’ve ever wanted to visit Twin Lakes, Minnesota, you might want to get on that soon. Trey Mewes at the Strib reports that 34 of the city’s residents have signed a petition to dissolve their government—and Twin Lakes itself. That might not sound like a lot of people, but it’s more than a quarter of the small town’s residents, and they’re fed up with the in-fighting that has essentially paralyzed the town’s public services.
As Mewes puts it, “Each of two major factions—one mostly aligned with current city officials and the other with former city officials—alleges harassment and claims that the other misused city money.” Or as former city clerk/petition signer Pat Gavle says, “Every time you think something can’t get any stupider, it has.”
Also shout out to photographer Aaron Lavinsky, who caught some great snaps of old people pointing angrily and looking exasperated.
NBC Takes ICE Ride-Along
“The biggest misconception is that we’re out there just randomly arresting people, which we’re not,” Marcos Charles, acting executive associate director for ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations, tells Gabe Gutierrez and Susan Kroll in this article for NBC. Plot twist: Turns out they actually are.
“During NBC News’ roughly eight hours with ICE, fewer than a dozen people were arrested despite not being the initial targets of the operation,” they write. “They just happened to be at the scene when agents showed up."
For the story, the reporters spent eight hours with ICE in Minnesota. We learn about ICE's struggles, like the challenges of hunting people down in freezing Minnesota weather (awww!), how crowds of concerned citizens can really muck up an arrest (hell yeah!), and that sometimes landlords won’t let them into their buildings without a warrant (sad!).
They also take some time to complain about protestors, who one agent claims some have "tried to block in their vehicles at scenes and had aggressively tailed them, even attaching Apple AirTags to their vehicles to track their movements." Keep up the good work, gang!
Mpls City Council Wraps Up 2025
The Minneapolis City Council approved a $2 billion budget on Thursday and authorized a 7.8% increase in property taxes (that comes to roughly a $20 monthly increase for the median homeowner). Council also approved a number of ordinances that it had been kicking around for a spell.
So what’s in this big ol’ budget? Well some of the folks at MinnPost and the Strib have combed through it and here are a few goodies that they found:
- $1.7 million to the MPD for a non-fatal shooting task force
- a $121,400 increase in funding for legal services for immigrants
- a $5.5 million decrease in the budget for the planned Public Safety Training and Wellness Center
- A $46,000 raise for the mayor
- $200,000 for the development of a city-owned grocery store
- $595,000 for a sidewalk snow removal pilot program
- And, yes, $700,000 for public bathrooms
The question now is whether Mayor Jacob Frey will sign the budget or whether it hurts his feelings. In a Strib op-ed last week, Frey had decried proposals to cut positions in the mayor’s office, calling the cuts “very unfair to me, your favorite mayor" “counterproductive and malicious.”
Frey went on to ask, “If a candidate supported by the council majority had won the mayor’s race, would the new mayor’s office be facing these same cuts?” not taking things way too personally at all. Having thus buttered City Council up by ascribing nasty motives to their proposals, he asked them to “collaborate” with him.
In the end, the approved budget makes only one cut to the mayor’s office.
City Council also voted itself leverage to ensure that the mayor's office sticks to the budget. The Strib’s Deena Winter points out a “new policy would not allow earmarked funds to be used for other purposes without the council’s approval, and would require that the council be notified if legislation can’t be carried out.”
In other last-minute business, council approved approved new homeless encampment policies, voted to strengthen the immigration separation ordinance, and approved a final plan for George Floyd Square. Whew!
P.S. Frey can veto all those as well.
