Transcripts

[SEAGULLS CAWING] RACHEL REABE: Tofte was settled 100 years ago by a trio of Norwegians hoping to make a living fishing the cold, clear waters of Lake Superior. The town's deep water dock, which enabled fishermen to load their catch onto steamships heading South for Duluth, still stands, now just a jumble of concrete pilings tilting down into the dark water. Brian Tofte, grandson of one of the town's founders, says the only thing that hasn't changed here is the shoreline. Tofte is built on.

BRIAN TOFTE: The shoreline hasn't changed at all. That's the interesting part. It's such a rugged and rocky shoreline that nobody's been able to change the shoreline itself within a few feet of it for years. So what we see today on the shoreline is exactly what they saw then.

RACHEL REABE: But almost everything else has changed in the town of 200 people located an hour and a half North of Duluth. The Township of Tofte has evolved from a quiet community with a sprinkling of small resorts and retirement homes into a tourist destination. The valuation of taxable property here has jumped from less than $1 million to more than $5 million in just 20 years. A tour of the town conducted by longtime resident Steve Krueger covers mostly what used to be here.

STEVE KRUEGER: This is the old part of town. This is where the old post office was, the Town Hall, and the school, and the park, and Andy Tofte had a store here.

RACHEL REABE: Bluefin Bay, a 10-year-old complex of condominiums, restaurants and gift shops, stretches along the shoreline where the center of town used to be. Krueger, who serves on the Township board, says they gave the Bluefin developers pretty much what they wanted in exchange for the jobs and tourists they would bring to town. After the fishing and logging industries dwindled, Krueger says there wasn't much left in Tofte. Now there are help wanted ads in the paper and not enough local people to fill the jobs.

STEVE KRUEGER: So that's why I think that it's been good for the community, very good for the community. You have to move forward a little bit. And we've done it, I think, at a pretty good rate. Now, this doesn't look overcrowded or anything. Sure, you come through Tofte and you'll see a lot of developed there. But that's just a short stretch in there. And it's about a half a mile or something like that.

RACHEL REABE: Construction is underway on both ends of Tofte. On the South edge, a new Holiday Inn is open, and work is being completed on a Holiday gas station. To the North, new townhouses are being built as Bluefin Bay expands. And ground has been broken for a historical museum depicting commercial fishing on the North Shore. After decades of slow, almost imperceptible change, the recent growth spurt has some people worried. Ecologist Kjell Anderson, a 20 year resident of Tofte, says the community must limit its growth.

KJELL ANDERSON: People don't want to say those words, limits to growth, because it's a very unpopular thing. It goes really against a very powerful cultural grain in our society. But if we want to keep what we have here in terms of the things that most people, I think, believe are part of the quality of life here, that's what it means. It means limits to growth. I really don't believe that if we put some limits on what people can do, that everybody's going to turn around and go home and say, well, forget you. I'm not coming.

SPEAKER: Good afternoon. Bluefin Bay. Did you say this is for four people? OK, were you interested in something with a kitchen, fireplace, Jacuzzi, any preference to any of those?

RACHEL REABE: The Bluefin Bay complex is booked solid for the weekend as tourists travel North to see the fall colors. Some 40,000 guests will stay at the 52 condominiums this year, pouring money into the local economy. Despite the prosperity that Bluefin has brought to Tofte, developer and general manager Dennis Rysdahl says people are more cautious about new expansion than they used to be.

DENNIS RYSDAHL: And there's a whole new attitude that's prevailing up here now that's driven by a lot of people who've moved up from the cities to get away from building and development and the hustle and the bustle and crowds. And so I would say in general, on the shore, there's a much more anti building, anti development attitude that prevails now as compared to 10 years ago.

RACHEL REABE: Rysdahl, who settled in Tofte to raise his family, says he's as concerned as anybody about preserving the unique character of the community. There are no plans to expand the condominium complex, and Rysdahl pushed hard to establish a local design and review committee to monitor new developments.

DENNIS RYSDAHL: My concern is that in the small amount of land that is available to develop, that we don't develop it in a fashion where it starts looking like anywhere else in the country. If we develop in a careful quality manner with some eye to aesthetics and some eye to keeping a traditional feel to the area, that will do fine.

RACHEL REABE: The design and review committee worked with the developers of the Holiday Inn and the Holiday gas station to make sure the new buildings would fit into the community. The gas station scheduled to open this month is getting a peaked, shingled roof rather than the standard flat metal one, and softer lighting with less signage. Owner Mike Quaife says he was willing to spend the extra $40,000 to make his business look less like a franchise gas station.

MIKE QUAIFE: I've made an effort. I want to fit in to the community. I want to be part of what's going on in this area. I want to be able to help.

RACHEL REABE: Dave Weber of Northfield has just finished a five-day Boundary Waters Canoe trip in the Tofte area. He says he's been coming to Tofte ever since he was a boy, and it's still a small town with a lot of open spaces.

DAVE WEBER: A lot of people aren't willing to travel four hours or five hours or six hours to get here, so I don't think it'll change drastically. It'll just become a little more commercial. I mean, it may double in size in 20 years, but I don't think that'd be such a horrible thing. It'll take a long time to become a megalopolis up here.

RACHEL REABE: The descendants of Tofte's founders have mostly accepted the changes that have come to their little town. Brian Tofte says his grandfather helped build the first road into Tofte in the early 1900s.

BRIAN TOFTE: So he wasn't blocking off this little section of the world just himself, he made it open to everybody. And that's my opinion. And my father felt that way, my uncles feel that way. People have struggled up here all their lives trying to make a living up here. And now people can live up here quite nicely.

RACHEL REABE: But Brian Tofte says he and his eight brothers and sisters aren't ready to sell the piece of land where they grew up to developers despite some tempting offers. And he says Andrew Tofte's original homestead next door will not be turned into a bed and breakfast, at least for now. I'm Rachel Reabe for Main Street Radio.

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