Downtown

By John Lundy jlundy@duluthnews.com

There are a billion reasons why everything is going to change for Duluth’s downtown.

“Downtown is going through a major transformation, one that we haven’t seen the likes of in a long time,” said Kristi Stokes, president of the Greater Downtown Council. “When you have more than $1 billion of investment coming into a neighborhood in the next year or two, that will make some significant changes to the neighborhood.”

Stokes was referring to the $1 billion investment planned in new construction between Essentia Health and St. Luke’s — already underway in the case of St. Luke’s and scheduled to begin this fall for Essentia.

Although the hospital construction will technically take place in the East Hillside neighborhood, Stokes is confident of a ripple effect — or, perhaps, more of a tidal wave — surging into downtown.

It dwarfs another big project, the reconstruction of Superior Street downtown, which is in the middle of its three-year lifespan.

“That was going to be a transformation for the downtown,” Stokes said. “The engineer even jokes that this is now one of the smaller projects in the downtown.”

As an example of the residual effect, she pointed to the plans for a 15-story, 204-unit apartment building in the 300 block of East Superior Street, at the site of the Voyageur Lakewalk Inn.

It underscores that downtown is becoming a place to live as well as a place to work and play, Stokes said.

While new development is grabbing attention, Stokes pointed to three aspects of downtown that might get overlooked:

The Skywalk system offers 3.5 miles of out-of-theweather connections. Many people use the indoor pathway for exercise, Stokes said, especially in the winter.

The Clean and Safe team. Wearing bright safetygreen shirts and navy pants or shorts, they operate as ambassadors for the Greater Downtown Council. “We hire for personality and train for skills,” Stokes said. “They all have great personalities.”

The historic. “If you look up, you see so much of our history, the architecture, the years on some of the buildings,” Stokes said. “We are the heart of our community, and we were the heart of our community when we started. It’s really great to be able to share that story.”