Morgan Park

By Brady Slater bslater@duluthnews.com

Jennifer Roy has spent the past 14 years in Morgan Park living at Spirit Lake Manor. She works across 88th Avenue West at Iron Mug Coffee House — the de facto neighborhood center.

“I wouldn’t live anywhere else,” she said. “It feels like a small town to me.”

Morgan Park was conceived as a workers’ community for the U.S. Steel plant adjacent to the neighborhood along the St. Louis River.

Though its telltale concrete block homes remain, U.S. Steel left for good in 1981, and the slow march of the neighborhood school came to an end in 2017, when Morgan Park Middle School was demolished.

But apartments are going up in its place. And it’s housing that Roy believes will be the revitalization of the neighborhood.

“Duluth is in so much need of housing,” she said. “It’s what brings people.”

Roy went on to talk about the $17.5 million apartments currently being constructed at the site of the old school along 88th Avenue West. Dubbed Morgan Park Estates, the complex that’s backed by developers from Eau Claire, Wis., will include ample green space to go with 96 market-priced units across eight buildings featuring 12 units each.

Eager to share more, Roy asked, “Have you seen the Thunderbird house?”

It’s yet another living option being constructed in the neighborhood — although a specialized one.

Located on Idaho Street, the ThunderbirdWren halfway house is nearly complete. The sprawling complex is a $4.5 million treatment facility with 40 beds, 20 each for men and women. It will be operated by Minnesota Indian Primary Residential Treatment Center, which is moving ThunderbirdWren into Morgan Park from space it outgrew in downtown Duluth. It will continue to house Native Americans seeking treatment for chemical dependency or alcoholism.

“Treatment facilities are another service we need,” Roy said.

With two big projects going up in a neighborhood that spent recent decades losing major entities, things are looking brighter for Morgan Park.

“I’m excited,” Roy said. “We’ve got the river here with biking trails and kayaking. The cool thing to do is going to be to move out west.”