Past dealings involving employee of developer raise questions

Bill Rieser, an employee of Ultimate Development LLC, says his past dealings with failed companies has no bearing on a plan to develop property along the Rainy River.
Rieser is the focus of an anonymous package of information sent to city officials and others recently in the community. The package presented information about Rieser’s involvement in business dealings in the 1990s.
“The International Falls, MN community should have absolutely no concern about the riverfront property purchased from Ultimate Development LLC,” Rieser said in a statement emailed to The Journal.
Falls Mayor Shawn Mason said, in an emailed statement to The Journal, that city officials had discussed the information in the package with Rieser.
“In my dealings with Bill Rieser, he has shown himself to be a visionary on the riverfront,” Mason wrote. “In part, because of his patience, commitment, and energy, our community is now poised to embrace our riverfront heritage in a historic manner.”
Ultimate Development, owned by Rieser’s wife, Kathryn Volin, purchased property between Rainy River and Highway 11 East from Boise Inc., which had selected Ultimate because it had a project history with the company in Horseshoe Bend, Idaho. Ultimate Development sold 11 acres of the property to the city of International Falls, which plans to develop a headquarters facility for Voyageurs National Park and a heritage center and park-like area.
Ultimate Development, according to Rieser, has been waiting for more than two years for the federal government to decide whether to construct a Border Patrol facility on Ultimate Development’s property to the west of the city property. Ultimate also plans to create a visitor destination resort on another portion of the riverfront property.
The information sent to city officials and The Journal included copies of newspaper clippings and court documents that show, among other things, that Rieser served two years and nine months in prison in the mid-1990s for tax evasion, money laundering and bank fraud for dealings with French Accent, a commercial bakery which collapsed after it was awarded loans from the Minneapolis Commercial Development Agency. According to a Star Tribune story, the deal cost Minneapolis taxpayers at least $1.3 million in bad loans.
Rieser served as chief executive officer when French Accent filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 1993. According to the Star Tribune, he was later removed from management of the company at the request of creditors.
In a statement sent to The Journal, Rieser said he would not defend any of the information nor continue to discuss the matter further.
“First and foremost, I have paid my debt to society,” he wrote The Journal. “Second, some of the information you received was totally inaccurate.”
Some of the information sent about Rieser was misleading. A clipping from the Mille Lacs Messenger reported that Rieser was charged with two felonies when he was accused of swindling two families out of nearly $400,000 while representing himself as a partial owner of Izatys resort and a log home salesman. A call to the Seventh District Court Administrator’s Office revealed that those charges had been dismissed.
The package also included newspaper clippings about Rieser’s involvement in companies called Southern Kitchens, a Twin Cities sandwich company, and Fine Line Music Cafe, a Twin Cities nightclub. Both of the businesses failed amid allegations of malfeasance from investors and former officers. Both companies were involved in court cases.
Rieser told The Journal that he “was tired of wasting time talking about the past. I prefer to look toward a more positive future.” He noted that he is not and never has been a shareholder of Ultimate Development. He also says he is not and has not been a shareholder of Grand Voyageur Group LLC, which has no interest in any of the property located in International Falls. He now serves as CEO of Ultimate Log and Custom Homes, with offices in Horseshoe Bend and Garden City, Idaho, and CEO of Grand Voyageur Group LLC, Garden City, Idaho.
“It is unfortunate that someone felt it was necessary to make my past a part of this project,” Rieser wrote to The Journal. “To attempt to destroy such an awesome opportunity for the city of International Falls is totally unbelievable to me, especially since I have NO OWNERSHIP of the property and have done nothing but encourage, promote and support the project.”
Mason said she believes Rieser’s past business dealings should be left in his past. She noted that Rieser said he had shared some of the information about his past with Boise officials as early as March 2006, before Ultimate Development’s purchase of the property in September 2006.
According to Mason, three different private developers, one local, are waiting to find out who will be selected by the federal government for the border security project prior to Oct. 15. The selected developer plans to purchase some of Ultimate’s property for the project. In addition, she said a hotel chain recently contacted the city and Ultimate about purchasing some of Ultimate’s land in the center of the riverfront property.
“My understanding is Bill has paid his debt to society some time ago,” she wrote. “Hopefully, we all learn from the past, but a dark cloud need not follow anyone into the future.”