Business View Magazine
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have municipal and state aid highway funds, which will
pay for the street work and streetscape, and then we’ll
get capital bonding dollars from the state for the infra-
structure work which will be underground. Our utility
funds will pay for the water and sewer lines via user
fees.”
Adam Fulton is the Planning and Community Develop-
ment Manager for Duluth, responsible for land use,
long range planning, and community and neighbor-
hood development strategies and programs, includ-
ing assisting residents in obtaining affordable hous-
ing and preserving the city’s affordable housing stock.
One of his department’s current projects is Gateway
Towers, a 142-unit, affordable housing rental commu-
nity in the eastern end of downtown. “We’re trying to
get these units re-habbed and retain them as afford-
able housing in our city,” he says. “We work with our
partners at the Center City Housing Corporation and
One Roof Housing, as well as the Duluth Housing and
Rehabilitation Authority (HRA).”
Gateway Towers is located where the Northern Lights
Express will terminate, and Fulton knows that the mar-
ket rate for a rental apartment near this soon-to-be-
built rail stop will naturally begin to go up. “And that’s
one reason why this Gateway Towers re-investment is
very important to us,” he says. “It’s a low-income hous-
ing, tax-credit project - a $17 million investment in that
142-unit apartment building. We expect construction
to begin in September of this year. And that will retain
housing affordability in that location for the foresee-
able future.”
Increasing the energy efficiency of Duluth’s housing
stock is another important page in Fulton’s portfolio.
“It’s cold up here in the winter,” he says, pointing out
the obvious. “So, we’re working with our partners at
the Duluth HRA and with a sustainability group called
Ecolibrium 3, trying to develop sustainable models for
housing retrofits. We’ve had lots of continuous invest-
ment in our housing stock and we want to make sure
that that investment is as sustainable as it can be -
which means making sure houses are airtight, and
well-insulated, and getting the proper solar exposure
that they need to use as little energy as they can in
these cold winters.”
Harsh winters notwithstanding, Duluth is still a year-
round recreation and tourist destination. Some 3.5
million visitors each year contribute more than $400
million to the local economy. “We’re a great outdoor,
recreational city, even in the winter,” says Hamre.
“We’ve got a ski hill and you can be on the slopes in a
matter of about ten minutes. We have wonderful park
spaces; we’ve got hiking and mountain biking; we’re
close to the Boundary Waters Wilderness Canoe area;
we’ve got water sports on Lake Superior. We were vot-
ed the Number One Outdoor City in 2014, by Outdoor
Magazine.”
There’s no denying that, in 2016, Duluth is, once again,
approaching another zenith. With its many maritime
shipping companies and tugboat operators, its four
Class 1 railroads and its 35 trucking firms, it’s still a
big transportation hub for the northern part of the Mid-
west; it’s also a regional hub for education with several
institutions of higher learning, including the University
of Minnesota at Duluth, the College of St. Scholastica,
and Lake Superior College; and it continues to grow its
aviation, medical, banking, and retail sectors.
And that’s why Duluth, Minnesota is, to this day, the
“Zenith City of the Unsalted Seas.”
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