About

The Cannon River Community Land Trust (CRCLT) builds and sells homes in the Northfield, Minnesota area based on the land-trust model, whereby the CRCLT maintains ownership of land on which a home is built after the home has been sold. This model reduces the cost of the home and maintains affordability of the units beyond the first homeowner.

The Land Trust was formed in October of 2001 as a non-profit to assist in the creation of long term affordable housing in Northfield and the surrounding area.  The area of operation for the Land Trust is the boundary of the Northfield School District.

Since its creation in 2001 the Land Trust has created 16 affordable single-family and twinhomes and plans to have 19 homes in the program by the end of 2006.  The Cannon River Community Land Trust (CLT) was able to accomplish this by partnering with the Northfield Housing and Redevelopment Authority (HRA) on its projects.   The CLT and HRA have partnered on four projects in the past five years.

History

Although the Land Trust was formed in 2001, formal creation of the group was preceded by almost two years of work by dedicated members of the Northfield Community, who started this process by serving on a steering committee that was researching the issue. Members of this steering committee included the following:

• Wendy Thorpe
• Donald Tarr
• Kris Vohs
• Thomas Neuville
• David Shumway
• Kim Clausen
• Joel West

Upon the conclusion of the work by the steering committee, a number of the members from that group became incorporators of the Cannon River Community Land Trust. These incorporators were:

• Wendy Thorpe
• Donald Tarr
• Kris Vohs
• Tomas Neuville
• Joel West

Michael Brown from Burlington Associates assisted in guiding the steering committee and the incorporators through the policy and technical aspects of creating a land trust.