At their regular meeting Tuesday, the Cloquet City Council unanimously denied a required wetland determination and delineation prepared through Real Estate Corporation of America (RE-Cor) as part of their proposed commercial and retail development at the intersection of Interstate 35 and Highway 33 in Cloquet.
When the Cloquet Wetland Technical Evaluation Panel cited problems with the wetland study last fall, they extended the deadline for the study to this spring, according to Holly Butcher, Cloquet community development director. No additional materials were submitted, however, and payments from RE-Cor to the city had lapsed, so staff recommended rejecting the study and denying the renewal of a development contract with RE-Cor.
The project is far from dead, however. City and county officials believe there is still merit to completing the survey for future development, so members of the Cloquet Economic Authority recommended and city council members approved paying nearly $8,000 out of the Carlton County Economic Development budget to Short Elliott Hendrickson (SEH) to complete the study.
"We are working on a trade area analysis, too, and once that [and the environmental study] is complete we can fold it all together and do a [request for proposal] process to include RE-Cor but other commercial developers as well," Butcher said. "We just want to make sure we get it right."
