Planned riverfront park downsized, on hold

Great report. It amazes me how much tourism tax money the City has spent already. If the tourism recovery takes more than one year the Tiffany glass may be on the auction block again.

The citizens that worked to save the estuary’s shore from a road and parking lot along with a paved road down to the water were Friends of Western Duluth Parks & Trails along with the IKES.

We won at the commission level because we had two commission meetings on the subject so they understood the City and our position. The sad thing was that the councilor sitting on the Parks Commission at the time decided to write a piece in the DNT on the Monday the Council was to take this up, along with another Councilor Noah Hobbs, on why they were voting FOR the park. We were very frustrated because she was supposed to be on the commission to communicate to the Council what was happening on the commission but she never did explain why the commission voted it down. It’s not recorded but I recall the commission vote to be 3-5 not in favor of the plan. The Council saw this issue within two weeks so the minutes were not available. The Council voted it in at 7-2.

The other thing is we had said all along we have areas already impacted along the estuary’s shore that could be uplifted with a paddle launch, Pier 7, Indian Point, and Munger Launch. The City said at every meeting that the Munger Launch parking lot was at capacity and at every meeting we would say no it’s not, only on opening of fishing and at tournaments. This is frustrating becasue the City askes for public comments and has stakeholder meetings where we share local knowledge. I guess if they don’t want to hear something, they just don’t comment on it.

I mention all this here because at some point FIlby Williams will slip this project through because at Riverwest the developers worked with the City to have this launch. Ski Hut is part of the development and pushed very hard to get it in, and Bill Burns will do whatever is needed to get what they want. The City even organized the paddlers and had the owner of the Ski Hut lead the group with the focus on getting this land for a paddle launch that isn’t needed for the public at this site but you can see it is for their business. The St. Louis River Alliance took a strange position on this project by supporting it.

I may not be around when this comes up again so I am hopeful that people will work to keep the estuary’s shore here from being developed more than it is. We will lose all the wildlife that uses this area for a parking lot and a road so the Ski Hut and the Vacation Dwelling Units have their private little launch at the expense of a nice quiet park that is best paddled and hiked to, not driven to.