A quick tour of stuff that I’m following from afar in Duluth this month:

Latest Developments (Pun Intended)

The big news this week was of a new development planned at the corner of 21^st Avenue East and London Road, a large apartment complex that caters to young professionals. Mixed-use apartments warm my urban planning heart, and it will be a welcome change for an otherwise rather bland, suburban-like stretch. Still, I doubt it will go up in its currently planned form: it seems awfully large for that spot, and the traffic in that area is already a bit stressed at times. I will also continue my grumbling about the boxy, cookie-cutter contemporary apartment buildings: is a little detail or nuance too much to ask for? (Perhaps I just spend too much time in Uptown Minneapolis these days, which is overflowing with such structures.) The last potential obstacle is the likely necessity of tax-increment financing to fund the thing, but I can certainly see it succeeding.

Between this new project and BlueStone, plus plans for the Lester Park Golf Course apparently working their way toward the sort of 18-holes-plus-new-houses compromise I’d hoped for, lots of the remaining developable urban space on the east side is being snapped up. Market forces (well, the market plus TIF) are clearly driving things here, though there’s some new stuff happening out west, too. The Lakewalk has been extended to Lincoln Park, and visioning events for the St. Louis River corridor are under way in earnest. There’s cause for a lot of excitement with all of this new development energy, though I’m sure there will be some clashes along the way, too.

The Mayoral Marathon Gets Under Way!

Let the succession fun begin! Northland News Center put out a long list of people who might join Howie Hanson as potential successors to Don Ness in next year’s election. It’s a very deep list, and is a who’s-who of Duluth politics. I’ll offer a handful of comments on most of them here:

Yvonne Prettner-Solon, should she enter the race, would be an obvious force to be reckoned with. The outgoing Lieutenant Governor would be the only person in the race with the status to escape Ness’s shadow. That hardly guarantees a win, and she will presumably have some re-connecting to do after four years in St. Paul. She will have to adjust to local-level administration, which is a different animal from her state legislature and governor’s mansion experience. Still, no one is better-positioned to harness the full power of the local DFL machine, if she does it right.

Among other DFLers, Emily Larson seems the best-positioned to pick up the Ness mantel. She’s similar to Ness in that she is fairly young and an upbeat, happy face for Duluth. She usually avoids controversial positions (for good or ill), and is a tireless worker. A vote for Larson would likely be a vote for continuity—and, given Ness’s success, that would put her among the frontrunners. West side state representative Erik Simonson, on the other hand, represents the traditional labor bastion of the DFL. His candidacy would test the staying power of labor in a city that is edging away from that old industrial identity, but he could also muster a broader coalition.

The list goes on. Roger Reinert has proven effective in the state senator, though I’m not sure he has the dynamism to surpass Prettner-Solon or Larson in a primary. Jennifer Julsrud is another prominent name who is playing coy so far; she has the potential to be a formidable politician, though she could perhaps use a bit more polishing on the City Council. Daniel Fanning joins Larson in the liberal optimist club, but does not have her elected experience, and someone coming straight out of Ness’s inner circle may be a bit too close for comfort. The same could be said for CAO Dave Montgomery, who is not a Duluth resident anyway. I’m not sure I see a road for Jeff Anderson out of this crowded field, either. There will be a lot of jockeying in the coming months.

Outside of the DFL, by far the most intriguing name is Chris Dahlberg. When Howie Hanson leapt into the race, I said there’s a serious opening for a west-side, fiscally conservative candidate that Hanson did not quite fill; Dahlberg might just be that candidate. The St. Louis County Commissioner, despite a lack of statewide exposure, came very close to sneaking in and stealing the Republican Party endorsement to run against Al Franken in this fall’s Senate race. His campaign for Senate was pretty much boilerplate conservatism, but that’s necessary to win a Republican primary; one would presume he knows he needs a bit more than that to win in Duluth. If he can manage a message that caters to Duluth’s particularities—a big if—he has a shot. Jim Stauber, on the other hand, is an also-ran at this point in his career.

It Wouldn’t Be a Duluth Update without Me Grumbling About the School Board

I don’t particularly feel like enduring the latest meeting, leaving me with two contradictory accounts. Jana Hollingsworth, who has covered these meetings with enviable detachment in the News Tribune, comes down pretty hard on Art Johnston for an exchange between him and HR Director Tim Sworsky. Harry Welty, on the other hand, puts all the blame on Sworsky for inciting the incident over Johnston’s marital status. I don’t see much room for anyone to claim moral high ground here. Whatever the merits, Johnston’s strong reaction only fuels the image his accusers would like to paint of him: a loose cannon, perhaps prone to irrational or even violent outbursts. Maybe that’s what Sworsky wanted when he picked at this scab, though in School Board affairs, I usually find it easier to suspect tone-deafness than genuine malice. Harry rails against the supposed lead witness against Ms. Bushey, but he seems to have already convicted this woman for an unrelated incident some ten years ago. (In general I enjoy reading Harry’s assessments of people, but once he’s formed an opinion on them, it seems like he’s unlikely to budge, no matter the evidence.) Meanwhile, the school district has yet to receive a single bill from the lawyer investigating Johnston’s alleged abuses. The saga goes on.

In case the ten billion TV attack ads relentlessly insulting your intelligence weren’t enough to remind you, we do have an election in just over a week. State and national elections are not my primary focus on here, so I won’t be writing about them half as much as I did about local ones last year. (For the most part, I endorse analysis coming from Aaron Brown.) I will, however, venture to explain why I don’t pay excess attention to national politics, and will offer up a few comments once all the votes are in. Stay tuned.