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Parklets 

This past summer, visitors to downtown Duluth may have noticed a collection of wooden tables, benches and planters occupying a parking space in front of Jitters Coffee House. Known as a “parklet,” the structure was a pilot project of the Healthy Duluth Area Coalition (HDAC), a group that seeks to improve the city using techniques they refer to as “tactical urbanism.”

On January 13, 2015, HDAC Director Lisa Luokkala told the Duluth planning commission that the project was intended to create “a more welcoming, inviting and healthy environment, particularly in our downtown, which is kind of known for its concrete.” Essentially, the parklet converts a single parking space “into people space.” Parklets are free-standing structures (that is, not fastened to the street) that can be disassembled and removed on short notice. 

The idea for parklets began in 2005, in San Francisco, when a design firm set up artificial turf and chairs in a parking space and invited people to plug the meter and sit down. In 2010, the city hired the firm to build the city’s first official parklet, which no longer required meter-plugging. Today, San Francisco has more than 50 parklets, many of them very elaborate, and the concept has spread to cities worldwide. Minneapolis, like Duluth, began a pilot project in 2014, with parklets at three locations.

According to Luokkala, Duluth’s parklet cost about $3,000 for materials and $5,000 in staff time to build, as well as 100 hours of volunteer work. It was partially funded by the city’s Legacy Endowment Fund; employees of DSGW Architects, as well as the city planning department, contributed their time and expertise. 

Throughout the parklet’s five weeks in front of Jitters (and another five weeks in front of the Duluth Coffee Company), HDAC conducted user surveys and tallies, and solicited feedback from business owners. They determined that an average of 6 people per hour used the parklet, and that a majority of users were 20 to 39 years old. 

“When we look at what sort of amenities the younger professionals in our community are looking for, they’re drawn to these things,” said Luokkala. “Most of the activity that was happening there was socializing, a lot of businesspeople coming out and eating their lunches and using that during their breaks. Probably the number-one thing [that we heard] is just that it was nice to have a place to sit outside on Superior Street, especially on a sunny day.”

How things can change. Those of us who were around in the late 1990s and early 2000s remember a city that was seemingly committed to yanking out as many public benches from the streetscape as possible. The problem, outlined by Mayor Gary Doty and the business community, was that too many undesirable people—drunks, panhandlers, teenagers, the homeless—were using the benches, which gave Duluth’s downtown a bad image. The problem was supposedly so horrendous that, in addition to pulling benches, the city passed a law under which businesses could establish “pedestrian transit zones” in front of their shops, to prohibit loitering. 

This foolishness, in turn, gave rise to a group that opposed the ordinance: the Coalition for the Freedom to Stand Still. In the end, the Stand-Stillers prevailed. Despite all the agitation from the business community in favor of pedestrian transit zones, no business ever actually applied for such a zone. In 2007, the ordinance was repealed. But the benches never came back.

As always with such issues, it’s the class distinctions that matter. If “young professionals” are “socializing” on benches in front of coffee shops, that’s great. But if homeless people and teenagers use the benches to “loiter,” that’s a problem. 

Historical double standards aside, parklets may be catching on. HDAC plans to conduct the pilot program for one more summer at various locations downtown. In consultation with the city planning department, they want to establish construction guidelines and a permitting process for parklets. The issue of lost parking revenue, which amounts to $6.75 per meter per day, will also have to be addressed, probably through a fee of some sort. 

Some anecdotes exist suggesting that parklets may increase business. Luokkala told the planning commission that “over half the survey respondents indicated that they spent somewhat more money in the surrounding businesses of the parklet.” In a recent New York Times article, a San Francisco pizzeria owner claimed that his business “quadrupled” since he installed a parklet in 2011. 

It is HDAC’s hope that businesses will be willing to shoulder the cost of building their own parklets. “We talked to the four businesses that were directly influenced—Jitters, Duluth Coffee Co., Fannie Rose Candy Shop and the Coney Island—and all four businesses would recommend a parklet to other businesses,” Luokkala said. “Three out of the four want to pursue [their own] parklet, if affordable enough.” 

To realize this vision, HDAC hopes that the city will provide “some sort of subsidy” to participating businesses to help defray the costs. 

Interstate Island

During their January 13 meeting, the planning commission also approved a special use permit for the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources to place up to 30,000 cubic yards of fill on Interstate Island, in the middle of the Duluth-Superior harbor. The man-made island, which straddles the Minnesota-Wisconsin border, was built in 1934 with dredge spoils from the harbor. It was designated a Wildlife Management Area in 1979, and is currently managed as “critical habitat” for the piping plover and as a nesting colony for common terns.

Over the decades, wind and water have eroded Interstate Island considerably, to the point that tern nests are threatened by floodwaters. The DNR plans to build up the Minnesota portion of the island by six to eight feet, anchoring the fill material with cobbles to reduce future erosion (they have done similar work on an island in Leech Lake). As common terns prefer sparsely vegetated areas to nest, all trees and woody plants on the colony site will be removed. Scattered stones, driftwood, and native plant species will be “randomly and sparsely distributed” over the surface of the completed site.

The DNR will also take measures to reduce the number of ring-billed gulls nesting on the island, which have been encroaching on the tern colony in recent years. A new “gull exclosure string grid”—criss-crossing wires several inches above the ground that don’t bother terns but discourage gulls from nesting—will be built, replacing an old one.

The DNR plans to complete the project by May 15, when the common tern’s nesting season begins.

We’re Number (hic) Shix! We’re…blaaarrrrrggggh!

In May of 2014, when Outside magazine announced its online contest for the title of “Best Outdoor City,” with Duluth as one of the contenders, Duluthians sprang into action. Mayor Ness held a press conference to drum up votes. A Vote Duluth website was created. Daily tweets urged people to vote for Duluth. 

“How cool is it to see so many Duluthians and Duluth supporters rallying around the city we all love?” asked the Duluth News Tribune ecstatically. “If you have multiple Internet-connected devices or maybe computers at both work and at home, then vote from all of them….Then go on Facebook to tell everyone you know to also vote for Duluth…Let’s every one of us make sure we win the whole thing.”

And vote we did, obsessively. For weeks, if you stood at the top of Enger Tower on a calm day, you could hear the sound of clicking mice rising up from all directions. And when we clicked our mice more than other towns did and actually won the contest, we could hardly contain ourselves.

 “It’s important to note a very real and significant change in our city that has resulted in this victory,” the mayor proclaimed on his Facebook page, “—a fundamental shift in how people think about Duluth.”

For decades, a fog of pessimism and defeatism hung low over the city—negative and cynical voices defined our city’s conventional wisdom. Too often we simply accepted the fact that Duluth would never fulfill its potential. Today, Duluth is a different place—the optimistic and positive voices are now being heard. Cynical people complain about problems, people who love Duluth are actually willing to work to solve problems. Cynical people complain about a lack of opportunities, people who love Duluth start their own community groups, build their own trail, start their own festivals, brew their own beer, and start their own businesses. Those that love Duluth understand that the best way to improve our city is through confident action, investment, and problem solving. That’s the most fundamental change in our city’s recent history.

It was an inspiring time. In the eternal war between “cynical people” and “people who love Duluth,” the people who loved Duluth were finally winning!

Now we have cause to celebrate further. It was prophetic of the mayor to highlight the contributions of people who “brew their own beer,” because Business Insider magazine recently ranked Duluth #6 in a list of the “Most Hungover Cities in America,” beating out even the notorious beer town of Milwaukee, Wisconsin (#12).

To compile their rankings, the scientists at Business Insider considered binge drinking rates, the number of liquor stores per capita, the number of breweries per capita, and health statistics published by the Centers for Disease Control, among other things. In one category—number of bars per 100,000 people—only Great Falls, Montana, placed higher than Duluth.

The #1 Most Hungover City in America was Lawrence, Kansas, followed by our neighbor to the west, Fargo, North Dakota. Hopefully, if Duluthians can rally together in 2015—perhaps by holding weekly binge-drinking marathons—next year the crown will be ours.

Inexplicably, the mayor’s Facebook page has so far remained silent about our latest achievement.