MARSHALL — The Minnesota Attorney General’s Office said the owners of the Broadmoor Valley mobile home park did not give proper notice of their intent to close the park, according to a letter provided to the city of Marshall last week.

After meeting with the Marshall city attorney in a closed session Tuesday evening, members of the Marshall City Council voted to cancel a Feb. 18 hearing on the park closure. The city will schedule a new hearing if they get a valid closure notice in the future, Mayor Bob Byrnes said.

In November, Schierholz and Associates, the owners of Broadmoor Valley, announced they planned to close the park in December 2025. The city would be required to hold a public hearing as part of the process of shutting the park down.

However, in a Jan. 8 letter to Schierholz’s attorneys, the Attorney General’s Office said the attempt to close Broadmoor Valley was unlawful. The letter said the owners’ closure announcement did not meet all the requirements of Minnesota law, because it didn’t include specific information on other available housing in the area.

A copy of the letter was provided to the city of Marshall last week, said Marshall City Attorney Pam Whitmore. The city had added the matter to the agenda for Tuesday’s regular council meeting.

“Yesterday, we received a letter from Schierholz and Associates’ attorney, claiming that the (Attorney General) was overreaching, and denying Mr. Schierholz and Schierholz and Associates their lawful rights by giving an opinion on the lawfulness of the closure statement,” Whitmore said. “That is the reason that we had the closed session, because in that same letter they had mentioned that there could be liability of the city for having the discussion about possibly having the public hearing.”

The letter from the Attorney General’s Office said the Broadmoor Valley closure announcement didn’t give specific information on the cost and availability of other available housing in the Marshall area. The Broadmoor Valley closure announcement mentioned that there were mobile home parks located in the cities of Minneota and Cottonwood, but it said it was unknown how many sites were available there, or what the costs of housing would be.

Because of that, the Attorney General’s Office said, the 12-month notice period counting down to Broadmoor Valley’s closure could not start.

Whitmore said it is the Attorney General’s Office, and not the city of Marshall, that is responsible for determining whether a manufactured home park has given lawful notice of shutting down. State statutes say the city must set a hearing date when it receives a closure statement for a mobile home park.

“It doesn’t say that we formally accept anything, or that we make any decisions on the validity,” Whitmore said. “Since we have been told that no lawful closure statement exists yet, the conversation the council would have is whether that public hearing can actually happen or be scheduled.”

Council member Craig Schafer moved that the city cancel the Feb. 18 hearing date, and wait until there was a valid closure notice accepted by the Attorney General’s Office to proceed. The motion passed.

At the same time that the Broadmoor Valley owners say they plan to close the park, they are also facing a lawsuit from the Attorney General’s Office. The lawsuit, which alleges Schierholz and Associates did not maintain the park to state standards and charged illegally high fees for late rent payments, is scheduled to go to trial next week in Lyon County District Court.