DULUTH — Duluth now has $1.8 million to plan ways to connect the city's downtown to Canal Park.
The U.S. Department of Transportation awarded the funds to the city through its Reconnecting Communities and Neighborhoods grant program. Various advocacy groups have long asked for the dismantling of Interstate 35 as it travels through the heart of the city. The Minnesota Department of Transportation and the Duluth-Superior Metropolitan Interstate Council last spring revealed plans that didn't go far enough with that a vision, critics said.
The grant allows the city and those agencies to develop a community-led plan for transportation and other improvements both in the downtown area of the interstate and in West Duluth, where that portion of the city is also cleaved in half.
Hundreds of buildings, including 500 homes, were destroyed in the development of the interstate through Duluth. Its existence divides important business corridors, limiting social cohesion and economic growth, the project summary says.
There are only two walkways over the interstate in the downtown area.
Both the Metropolitan Council and the Department of Transportation are studying changes to be made over the next two decades to the entire Duluth interstate corridor.
