Duluth’s East Downtown, Hillside and Waterfront Charrette

DULUTH CHARRETTE PRINCIPLES (Spring 2006 Update)

GUIDING PRINCIPLES FOR PLACE-MAKING

AND COMMUNITY BUILDING

Plans, regulations, and projects are some of the means for implementing the vision of Duluth’s East Downtown, Hillside and Waterfront Charrette. These implementation tools will continue to evolve over time. They are guided by a broad, holistic vision of place-making and community building as represented in the following “Duluth Charrette Principles” generated by the citizens of Duluth during the charrette.

1. Boost Duluth!
Nurture a collaborative culture that maintains a positive dialogue focused on enhancing Duluth’s quality of life.

2. Evoke a sense of place.
Encourage all new development and public investment in the downtown to say, “This is Duluth,” reflecting the city’s unique regional geography, climate, history, and character and rejecting “Anywhere USA” models that would erase everything that is special about Duluth.

3. Foster public safety.
Encourage mixed-use infill development that brings more residents, businesses, and 24-hour activities to the downtown. More "eyes on the street" create a safer public realm. Pursue place-making initiatives and programming to improve the attractiveness of existing public spaces to reinforce them as magnets for public activity. Increasing the number of people in the city’s public spaces, along the lakefront, and in the neighborhoods will enhance community livability while promoting public safety. Enhance focal points within the larger public parks and program them for regularly recurring events such as community “jam sessions” (open stage, bring your own instrument), flea markets, farmer’s markets, and participatory arts, sports, and cultural activities. Facilitate a continuous multicultural dialog that celebrates diversity through similar initiatives in the arts, sports, festivals, and other community building initiatives.

4. Preserve and enhance heritage resources.
Preserve historic buildings, public spaces, and view corridors to the lake. Duluth’s industrial history and historic architecture are key aspects of Duluth’s quality of life, and contribute to its distinctive identity and attractiveness as a place to live, work, recreate, visit, and invest in the city’s homes, businesses, and institutions.

5. Invest in the public realm.
Create a continuous network of streets, sidewalks, and parks that are safe, vibrant, and pedestrian friendly. Replant street trees and prevent exposed parking lots and garages, blank walls, “dead space,” and spaces that are difficult to monitor for safety. Encourage glass enclosure of sidewalks that can be opened up during warmer months as a cost-effective alternative to skywalks, capable of providing shelter from harsh weather while retaining pedestrian traffic at the street level to support ground-floor retail businesses.

6. Establish and restore the unique urban ecology of the city’s neighborhoods, districts, corridors, and downtown.
The highest quality of life is achieved in places that provide a full spectrum of places and experiences across a range of natural and built landscapes. Preserve the city’s natural settings and enhance the urbanity of the downtown and adjacent neighborhoods. Build dense, mixed-use in downtown with an urbanscape; infill medium and low-density housing in the surrounding neighborhoods with a greenscape. Start a street tree planting program.

7. Calm traffic and improve connectivity.
Make downtown Duluth a safe and inviting place to walk and find your way around. Traditional tree-lined, two-way streets with on-street parking provide greater connectivity, make navigating easier for visitors (in car and on foot), and increase traffic calming and pedestrian safety compared to one-way streets, whose primary purpose is to move large numbers of vehicles at higher speeds. The extension of I-35 through the downtown has made the majority of the downtown's one-way streets unnecessary. Restore the historic street network by converting one-way streets back to two-way streets with on-street parking to the fullest extent possible. Start a program of street improvements to enhance bicycle and pedestrian movement and add pedestrian connections to Lake Place Park. Require new development and redevelopment of properties to reconnect pedestrian- and bicycle-friendly fragments of streets and blocks into a continuous walkable network.

8. Broaden the mix of uses.
Create a downtown, hillside, and lakefront where people choose to live, work, and play. Cluster and mix modest retail, dining, and cafes with civic and institutional uses. Reinforce concentrations of retail where it already exists and encourage concentrations of similar types of businesses (e.g., dining, antiques, home furnishings, arts-and-culture related) to magnify their power to attract visitors.

9. Expand housing opportunities for people from all walks of life to live downtown.
Tap the market demand for a variety of urban housing types (condominiums, town homes, live-work, urban apartment buildings, small lot single-family attached and detached), income levels, and seasonal residences in and around the downtown. Look for win-win development opportunities that accommodate new, profitable housing and mixed-use development while providing some units, funding, land, or other resources to support workforce and low-income housing initiatives. Market Duluth’s amenity package of natural beauty, cultural heritage, excellent health care facilities, low cost of living and high quality of life to attract new seasonal and permanent residents.

10. Improve the regulatory framework.
Create a form-based code that provides citizens, decision-makers, and developers with a transparent, visual language to guide new development and redevelopment of properties within the study area. The form-based code should illustrate a predictable build-out that reflects the Duluth Charrette Principles, and revalues rather than removes existing building stock. Simplify the process of review, permitting, and approvals for development proposals consistent with the Duluth Charrette Principles, the charrette plan, and the form-based code.