Brent Peterson says it’s good news that there’s a plan to preserve historic Cedarhurst Mansion in Cottage Grove. The bad news, Peterson said, is the plan for six other buildings to be demolished and replaced by seven apartment buildings.
“To save the mansion, but not the support buildings that helped run it, is to defeat the purpose,” said Peterson, director of the Washington County Historical Society.
Peterson reacted to a plan presented to the Cottage Grove City Council on Feb. 2. A developer is proposing to restore the 155-year-old property, in exchange for surrounding it with a 261-unit apartment park.
“It’s a trade-off,” said Bob Vogel, an historian who watched over Cedarhurst for 15 years for the city of Cottage Grove.
He said the costs of buying and maintaining historic properties is sky-high, and developing the surrounding land is often the only way to compensate. “It comes up every time,” said Vogel, a historical consultant for Edina and Newport.
Cottage Grove is exploring how to preserve one of the more historically important buildings in the state. City Administrator Jennifer Levitt said the goal is to restore it and keep it open to the public.
“We want to step very lightly,” said Levitt.
HOW MUCH CAN THE CITY AFFORD?
But how much history can the city afford? Cottage Grove would never buy the 13-acre estate, said Levitt. The annual maintenance costs are unknown, but previous owners have spent millions on keeping up the mansion and six other buildings.
That leaves one option — getting a business to do it.
Somehow, said historian Vogel, the city must persuade the owners to undertake that expense — and permitting development around the site is one way to do that.
The owner, Three Sixty Real Estate Solutions LLC, submitted the concept plan showing the mansion surrounded on three sides by five townhouse buildings and two five-story apartment buildings.
Company Development Director Jeremy Novak said no final decisions have been made about what will be preserved.
“There are a lot of moving parts in the economic equation,” said Novak.
No one disputes the historic value of the mansion, but the six outbuildings are another matter.
In 1886, Cordenio Severance, an attorney for railroad tycoon J. J. Hill, expanded the original farmhouse into a mansion. Cass Gilbert, the architect of the Minnesota Capitol building and the U.S. Supreme Court Building in Washington D.C., built additions to the mansion in 1911 and 1917.
The 13-acre estate included 12 buildings. The owner built cottages for two essential employees — the gardener and the chauffeur.
A FORMER CENTER OF POWER AND INFLUENCE
At its peak, Cedarhurst was a center for power and influence — visited by four U.S. presidents. But starting in the 1950s, the mansion began to slowly deteriorate. In 2008, Laotian immigrant True Thao bought Cedarhurst, and operated it as a wedding venue and meeting space.
In 2015, a fire destroyed the chauffeur’s cottage.
For much of that time, historian Vogel monitored the tortuous process of maintaining Cedarhurst.
“My job was to make sure the owners were not driven crazy or bankrupted by it,” he said.
Now, the outbuildings will be demolished for the apartment complex. But how important are they?
Vogel said one building had historic significance — the gardener’s cottage. “These are cute little historic houses,” said Vogel.
‘THEY TELL A GREAT STORY’
County historical society president Peterson said he believes as many buildings as possible should be saved.
“Why do we need them? They tell a story of the property,” he said.
But it’s sometimes hard to control what someone can do on their own property. The site is already zoned for the apartments and mixed-use development, said city administrator Levitt.
She hopes to find a way to make the property attractive to investors, yet still maintain the mansion and keep it open to the public.
“There are some unique things in this community,” she said, “and we do not want to see those things lost.”