Welcome back to The Flyover, your daily digest of important, overlooked, and/or interesting Minnesota news stories.
Wanna Buy the Priciest House in Minnesota?
You can—for just $55 million, that is. And that's a discounted asking price.
The compound at 2770 Gale Rd. in Wayzata initially hit the market in 2024 with an asking price of $68M, making the national media rounds at the time due to its astronomical price tag. The 28,000-square-foot house is a new build on eight acres of Lake Minnetonka's "premium west-facing lakeshore," according to John Adams Real Estate. The double-gated property boasts two guest houses, a pool house, and a boathouse, along with a bowling alley and "$4 million worth of Italian bulletproof doors and windows," per a Star Tribune story from last year. (The previous owner, prolific horse racing guy Bob Lothenbach, died unexpectedly in 2023 before construction was completed.)
"Every aspect of the property is adorned with high-end, imported, hand-selected, and curated finishes," the listing agent writes. "Unquestionably it is the #1 site on Lake Minnetonka, offering an unparalleled degree of privacy and commanding west-facing views."
The current record-holder for Minnesota's most expensive home sold in 2006 for $17 million, meaning the Gale Road property has the potential to smash that record. Of course, it would have to sell first—I personally don't know anyone with $55 mil laying around. And if you're worried about high interest rates? This isn't the the stratosphere of Zillow listings for you.
NW MN Loses Four More Newspapers
Don't let the photo of grinning, paper-brandishing publisher Dick Richards that leads this Strib story fool ya—the news that four northwest Minnesota newspapers are shuttering didn't leave us with a lot to smile about. As Kim Hyatt reports from Gonvick, a decline in subscribers has lead publisher and editor Dick and Corinne Richards to close the Leader-Record, Grygla Eagle, Red Lake County Herald, and McIntosh Times. Dick reports that the combined total of subscribers is down to just 2,500, when not long ago, it was twice that.
“There isn’t a solution to solve the problems we have, and it’s just the way it is,” says Dick, to which Corinne adds: “The little hometown paper feel—it’s something different, you know, it’s really just special.” (She's been writing a column called Corrine's Corner for more than 50 years.)
"A fall study found Minnesota lost 34% of newspapers in the past 20 years, mostly in rural areas like Clearbrook and Gonvick, 40 miles northwest of Bemidji," Hyatt writes. Not great!
Did You Know There's an Interactive DWI Dashboard?
We didn't! But back in October, as Fox 9's Nick Longworth reported at the time, the Minnesota Department of Public Safety Bureau of Criminal Apprehension released a public version of a map tool that had previously been accessible only to law enforcement. The DWI Dashboard lets you filter by location, date, gender, and age, and you can even see each offender's blood alcohol levels and whether they had any prior DWI incidents. (Names are omitted—your company's C-suite is safe.)
We wound up on the dashboard after reading via WDIO in Duluth that there were more than 400 (!) DWIs in Minnesota over Memorial Day weekend—and that figure is actually down (!!) from 437 during the same weekend in 2024. Turns out, people are just, like, driving drunk around you all the time, I guess? The density of data points on the dashboard does not leave one with a "good" feeling about the impairment levels of your fellow drivers.
Anyway, as State Patrol public information officer Mike Lee tells WDIO, Memorial Day kicks off the start of the so-called "100 deadliest days," which ends on Labor Day. Please drive safe and please consider not driving drunk!
They're Retiring the Ol' 21
"The most iconic bus route in the state," "God's slowest bus"—however you choose to think about Route 21 (two things can certainly be true at once), there's no denying that the bus line is a local legend. So, as Metro Transit prepares to begin B Line Bus Rapid Transit service along the old route, it's fitting that they'll give the 21 a proper send-off to public transportation heaven.
On Friday, June 13, join Metro Transit at the Nicollet Garage at 42 W. 32nd St., Minneapolis for a farewell toast hosted by Tane Danger with remarks by 21A playwright Kevin Kling. (In 21A, Kling plays all eight characters on a Minneapolis bus.) BRT service on the route starts June 14.
