Associated Press
Published Sept. 1999
October 27, 1999
BREEZY POINT, MN -- Timeshare owners are suing Breezy Point resort, saying they paid extra to have flexible vacation
scheduling that has since been discontinued.
The $6.3 million lawsuit is the fourth involving the management of about 150 units where more than 7,000 visitors
stay each year.
The dispute, which started last fall, has involved proxy fights among owners, threats by the resort to close swimming
pools, beaches and other amenities, and charges of lying, cheating and questionable financial dealings.
The resort, on 8,300-acre Big Pelican Lake about 20 miles north of Brainerd in central Minnesota, sold each timeshare
owner the use of a vacation unit for a week or more. The lawsuit alleges that more than 2,000 owners paid the resort
about $2,100 to $3,000 apiece more for ''flex and bonus time.'' That arrangement allows owners to switch from one
week to another during the year and to share in extra available time at the resort.
But that service stopped in December, after 11 of the 12 owner associations announced that they were switching
their $1.1 million-a-year management contract from the resort to an independent company operated by former resort
employee Neal Narveson.
The resort says it couldn't manage the flex and bonus service if it wanted to.
''This is essentially a reservation system,'' John Rode, an Edina lawyer representing the resort, said Monday.
''We don't have control of the reservation system any longer, so it's our position that it's a program that should
be conducted by Narveson Management or whoever the time-share owners hire.''
The timeshares also are traded through a national vacation association, so, Rode said, ''We don't know who's in
the room from day to day, week to week or month to month.''
The lawsuit was filed earlier this month in Crow Wing County District Court in Brainerd by Donald Minor and William
Yax, presidents of two timeshare associations, on behalf of themselves and other timeshare owners. They say it
is up to the resort to provide the flex and bonus service or to refund the money paid for it, which they estimate
at $6.3 million.
Breezy Point includes hotel, motel and convention facilities, dining, golf and entertainment, as well as the timeshare
units. It was founded in the 1920s as a 20-cabin resort.
In other legal action, 11 of the timeshare associations sued the resort after it threatened to shut down or charge
additional fees for such amenities as swimming pools, beaches, tennis courts, playgrounds and exercise equipment.
The associations said owners already bought into those amenities as part of their purchases of time-share units.
Rode said the amenities are maintained for now under a temporary injunction that the resort did not oppose on condition
that the associations file a $20,000 bond. But he will seek to have the lawsuits dismissed in the next couple of
months ''on grounds that we own the amenities and that the (timeshare) owners have the obligation to pay the pro-rata
share of the maintenance and upkeep just like anybody else would if they belonged to a country club or townhouse
association.''