Our Neighbour To The South, Duluth MN Has Done It Right
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Our Neighbour To The South, Du

Our Neighbour To The South, Duluth MN Has Done It Right

by Scott A. Sumner
  Each November during the American Thanksgiving weekend I travel to Duluth, Mn. My main focus is to cover the WPSA Amsoil Duluth National Snocross race for our publication Northwestern Ontario Snowmobile News and website www.slednews.com. This is one of Duluth’s busiest weekends of the year  with some $ 6 million dollars injected into the local
economy by the race which attracts some 33,000 fans and 1000 competitors. Also it is a huge time for shopping as retailers pull out all the stops for what is known as Black Friday.
    This year I was able to stay in the Holiday Inn & Suites in downtown Duluth. This 300 room hotel is ideally located, connected to the skywalk system which lets you walk to many store locations and to the waterfront including the DECC and Canal Park. It really is a nice set
up and creates a great tourism draw as well as  a more connected downtown business core. At one point of the skywalk system you go right through a major bank.
   I had some time on Monday before the three hour drive from the Holiday Inn & Suites to my driveway in Oliver Paipoonge so it was a walking tour (urban hike) of downtown Duluth. The management at the DECC gave me a tour of their facilities which include a 2500 seat plus
auditorium and almost 6000 seat arena. I was told they expect funding to be finally authorized by the state to begin construction of a new arena this spring which will hold 9,000 spectators. The current 40 year old arena will become a practice facility. There is a lot of activity
in the arena with their university teams as we have locally. The Canal park waterfront continues to grow with another new hotel opened to add to some 6 or more others. It really is an area that is set up for visitors to Duluth. I’m sure the Duluth economy is much stronger given their tourism efforts.

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   Lets hope we can move forward in Thunder Bay on our waterfront plans. I read lots of material from local residents asking for little or no development at the waterfront especially if it comes to hotels or condos. It seems to me we have large expanses of shoreline in our area
as we are so lucky to be situated on beautiful Lake Superior. The downtown core known as Prince Arthur’s Landing is an ideal site to begin some commercialization that will serve people from our city, but tourists as well who will stay for awhile. I’m also a fan of building a
new 5000 seat arena on the waterfront. It would act as a focal point or catalyst for other development of the waterfront which has gone underutilized for too long. Surely there is a way to accommodate a large structure like this with parking in a location we can easily
reach.
   The next time you are in Duluth just spend some time exploring their downtown and waterfront.  When we look at things realistically in today’s world we might just learn something!



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