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FRIDAY FISH FRY: Where to go during Lent PAGE 9
Daylight Savings begins on March 14
Neighbors keeping an eye on Lakeside Club development BY LORETTA HARDING CONTRIBUTING WRITER
The days of driving out to the woods near White Bear Lake in your roadster to dine at an exclusive dinner club have been over for more than a year now. That icon of a bygone age could soon be gone permanently if the vacant Lakeside Club building is razed to make room for a proposed 40-unit market rate apartment complex. Mahmood Properties, which owns the Lakeside Club property at the east end of Old Wildwood Road, has contracted with Hearth Development of St. Paul to develop an apartment complex to be called Mahtomedi Lakes. The apartment units will range in size from one-bedroom to two-bedroom, plus den. Every unit will have at least one dedicated underground parking stall. The site is zoned for high-density housing, but is surrounded by low-density residential properties. Neighbors have raised flags about the replacement of a one-story building surrounded by a parking lot by a three-story apartment building. Developers are working with the Mahtomedi Planning Commission to obtain a few variances and conditional use permits (CUP) for specifications that don’t fall within acceptable requirements. The developers have asked for seven variances due to what they say are “practical difficulties with the conditions of the parcel” such as wetlands and the size of the “actual buildable footprint.” Some of the variance and CUP requests include 16.7 units per net developable acre; decreased required lot area per unit from 4,356 square feet to 3,200 square feet; an increase from the maximum 25 foot height to 40 feet; an increase in the 25 foot height in the Shoreland Overlay District, and a 40foot variance from the required north setback of 50 feet. In other words, the developers would like to build a structure that is substantially taller and closer to the street than is normally allowable in the zoning area. About two dozen nearby residents and interested citizens held a neighborhood Zoom meeting to prepare a presentation for the April 13 Planning Commission
Centenarian recalls romance that blossomed during WWII BY DEBRA NEUTKENS STAFF WRITER
When a patriotic girlfriend talked MaDonna Bonk into enlisting, little did the World War II veteran know she’d meet the love of her life in a San Diego Naval hospital. It was 1943 when the girl from central Illinois first laid eyes on Edward Bonk. The young Marine
officer came in on a gurney. “I took his vitals,” recalled Bonk, a medic at the time and member of the U.S. Navy corps of females known as WAVES. A lieutenant in the U.S. Marine Corps, Bonk was gravely injured in a brutal battle for Tarawa, an atoll in the Pacific’s Gilbert Islands. He suffered shrapnel SEE TURNING 100, PAGE 10
DEBRA NEUTKENS | SUBMITTED
World War II Navy veteran MaDonna Bonk turns 100 on March 12. She holds a 1944 photo taken in San Diego while on a date with future husband and Marine officer Edward Bonk.
PAUL DOLS | PRESS PUBLICATIONS
Cleanup before the melt Above: Scouts and parent volunteers from Troop and Pack 89 in Mahtomedi begin the cleanup process on the frozen surface of White Bear Lake near Bellaire Beach last weekend. Dozens of volunteers, using a variety of tools including sleds and hoes, at left, originated at several different starting points around the lake. Event Co-Chair Jim Schuster reported that the numbers from this year’s haul were less than the 18 year average. This year 106 volunteers collected more than 300 pounds of trash. It was the 18th year of the Lake Cleanup Event.
SEE DEVELOPMENT, PAGE 11
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