#DuluthDownload 25.8
Following the happenings of the 2025 Duluth City Council and more.
Good morning! It’s Election Week, so let’s start with some stats. A powerful majority of 67% of poll respondents in my last newsletter elected Fall as the Best Duluth Season. A small minority, 6% said Winter. We are now in the point of the year where it is kind of both.
If you look at this poll and think to yourself “Wow, only 65 voters choosing the best season for an entire city seems low…” remember that the world belongs to those who show up. There is an election on Tuesday, and who makes decisions for both our city and school district will be determined by the ~ 30% of registered voters who choose to show up. So, if you live in Duluth, please remember to vote on Tuesday.
Today, we cover one of the bigger topics going on in town from my perspective: Lester Park Golf Course.
A Future Emerges for Lester Park Golf Course
In 2006, I moved to Duluth to attend UMD (and never left). The bubble of the campus life - dorm, class, dorm, class, dining hall, friend’s place, intramurals, grocery store, repeat - meant it was a slow process for me to start to feel connected within the bigger community. One of the first places that happened was venturing east from UMD with my roommates to hit the driving range at the Lester Park Golf Course.
The Lester Park Golf Course (LPGC) is a prideful feat of civic success from an era when Duluth had immense private wealth and public/private partnerships that got things done. Hatched as an idea in 1930, the course was built for $25,000 from entirely private funding upfront. The city made payments over a period of five years back to the investors and the first holes opened to the public in May of 1932. Decades of successful public golf followed, until financial troubles traced back to the 1990 expansion of both Enger Park Golf Course and LPGC to 27 holes each escalated. This put the city in a position of operating two large courses that weren’t cash flowing, both with infrastructure near failing conditions, that ultimately led to the closure of LPGC during Covid.
There has been much discussion about what to do with LPGC since it became Duluth’s largest unintentional dog park after closure. Mayors Bergson, Ness, Larson, and now Reinert have all pitched varying levels of housing on the property. I have spoken with various developers over the years with interest in concepts that go beyond housing (restaurant, shops, hotel, golf, etc.). And there is a contingent of nonprofits hoping to see some of the 260 acres used to add to our purpose-built public green space. We’ve had citizen task forces, parks golf committees, and cross-functional working groups all come up with the same conclusions that there is a brighter future for this large property than the tall weeds it is today.
So why hasn’t something happened?
At the heart of the purgatory LPGC has been in over the past five years is a 1950’s state statute that requires the sale of any property zoned as parks to be approved by an 8/9 majority vote of the city council. This law was put in place for good reason - we love our public spaces as Duluthians and cherish them to the point it should be difficult to sell any of it. But to do any amount of housing or other complimentary development on this site, one of the only large-scale locations in the city we could explore more housing at, there must be a sale (and therefor super-super majority vote of the council). I have taken some heat for being so blunt that this site needs to have housing on it, but with our current parks $100+ million in the hole in deferred maintenance and a new housing study that shows we overwhelmingly need options like LPGC on the table, I believe the vast majority of Duluthians are on the same page.
And for those of us who have any hope of some form of golf again at LPGC, development is the only path forward without public resources to do it.
In 2021, the council dipped our toe on this concept with a smaller 37.5 acre parcel of the LPGC near Superior Street (map below). But ultimately, the specific conditions for development that were attached by a few councilors as a condition of gaining their support proved infeasible to the point that Oppidan, the developer who was ultimately selected to try and make a go of it, has not been successful in doing anything that works economically. Oppidan’s option for this smaller section of LPGC expires at the end of 2025. If the option isn’t executed by the end of the year, the Duluth Economic Development Authority (DEDA) will resume site control.
Fast forward to 2025. After an election in 2023 where the future of LPGC was heavily debated and the vision of Mayor Reinert for the property to no longer sit dormant was clearly backed by a majority of Duluthians, there is finally momentum to get unstuck. Last week, I co-authored a resolution with Councilors Awal, Durrwachter, and Nephew to back a 9-month land use study that will open the door to a comprehensive public process with the goal of answering the question of what we want LPGC to be going forward once and for all. It passed unanimously. The following day, the Planning Commission also voted unanimously to approve a conditional transfer of the property to DEDA for the portion that development is supported at through the study process. This would allow DEDA funds (not property taxes) to pay for the study and creates a path to both development and permanent green space protection at the site. That will now come to the council for a vote in November.
At the same time as this critical conversation moves forward, there will now also be a second action brought forward. Lester Park, the property across the road from LPGC, traces back to the 1890’s as a public park. Despite that, you would likely be surprised to learn that most of it actually isn’t zoned as a park. Rather, it is mostly zoned residential (see map below - the green area with the LP text over it and the brown area zoned RR-1 above it between Seven Bridges Road and Lester River Road is essentially the border of Lester Park).
This is due to the city only in recent years finding a path forward to acquire large amounts of property in some of our most cherished public parks that were tax forfeit (thanks to former Director Jim Filby Williams and others). However, the zoning on these parcels is often not aligned with the long-standing public use, and Councilor Roz Randorf and I are working with others to fix that as part of this conversation.
We have it backwards - unprotected land currently in Lester Park, and other parks like Piedmont, Hartley, and others, should be permanently set aside for park space. Lester Park Golf Course should be considered for housing, complimentary development, and some additional public green space - both growing our housing stock, our tax base, and becoming more than an unsanctioned dog park. This plan has momentum, would be a win for the entire community, and is picking up steam. If you think that sounds like a good path forward, don’t hesitate to reach out to your city councilors.
Important Things to Know
Elections are Tuesday! I am supporting Tara Swenson in District 4, Terese Tomanek and Derek Medved for At Large, and Kelly Durick Eder and Amber Sadowski for School Board At Large.
Given my day job in economic development at Minnesota Power (which I’ve worked in for over 10 years), I have had a few people reach out with questions about the proposed Hermantown Data Center project. To clear it up for anyone with questions, the Duluth City Council will not be voting on anything to do with the project given it is not in our municipal boundaries, and therefore there is nothing for any Duluth City Councilor to abstain on. A few constituents have asked me about water availability in the city but given the Hermantown proposal would use 30-50k gallons/day (relatively light for industrial purposes), there are no concerns from Duluth Public Works staff about the incremental water supply.
The city held our all-day Finance Committee meeting on the 2026 budget on Friday at the DECC. My next newsletter will focus on this topic. Councilor Roz Randorf summed up the challenge of our tax base (new developments) lagging our growing expenses poignantly - we need to grow our way out of the math problem we have in the years ahead to grow/maintain our service levels without big tax increases, or there will be cuts in the years ahead.
Kudos to K9 Gus for this one!
The council will be putting a moratorium on new vacation rentals (VRBO’s) in November. More covered next month on that topic as well.
Thanks folks! Enjoy your Sunday and SKOL Vikings!
People in Duluth want green space and golf. Affordable housing is not mutually exclusive of these things. Pushing development of expensive homes and apartments will not solve our housing needs.
Arik:
You are massively incorrect regarding sale of Lester Park. The extra steps required to sell Lester Park are because it has been designated "Park" as per state statute. What the land is ZONED for by the city is irrelevant and plays no part in the additional steps needed to sell Lester Park to DEDA. Cities often ZONE land as Park or Open Space as a reserve designation until a higher and better use is contemplated. It is difficult for me to wrap my head around you not knowing this basic principle, especially since you always know everything and the rest of the members of Council seem to follow your lead. Makes me wonder what else you have been massively wrong about!