With Duluth growing more since 2020 than it had in the last half century, we finally have an opportunity to reclaim “Zenith City” status.
Unfortunately, we’re making it impossible.
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Consider the words of Minnesota’s U.S. Sen. Tina Smith: “There are more people who are looking for a place to live than there literally are places for them to be. So, the first thing we have to do is to get after that challenge.”
Duluth, covered primarily in single-family homes, will rely a lot on the creation and conversion of multiplexes and townhomes to meet its housing demand. Since these usually aren’t a safe enough bet for traditional developers to pick up, we have to change the way we think about building. We have to depend on ordinary homeowners, small developers, and nonprofits.
But having to spend several months and thousands of dollars planning your build and ensuring it’s code-compliant just to risk City Hall rejecting it anyway is a headache. Then you consider that each month of delay can cost tens of thousands per unit, and it just isn’t worth it.
South Bend, Indiana — slightly larger than Duluth — addressed this by creating free, pre-approved construction plans. These are hom...