Duluth proceeds with plan to redevelop idled municipal golf course - Duluth News Tribune - FOGOLF

DULUTH — After six years of dormancy and debate about its future, a plan for the former Lester Park Golf Course property soon could take shape.

By an 8-1 vote Monday night, city councilors approved the prospective transfer of up to 230 acres of the abandoned municipal golf course to the Duluth Economic Development Authority. The prospective development agreement passed by the narrowest of possible margins, as the property in question was designated publicly owned open space/parkland, and any sale of city property with that sort of zoning must garner the support of no less than eight of the city’s nine sitting councilors to proceed.

The sole dissenting vote was cast by 1st District Councilor Wendy Durrwachter, who represents Duluth’s easternmost neighborhoods, including Lester Park.

The council listened to approximately two hours of public testimony delivered by more than 30 citizens before addressing the future of the former municipal golf course, which has been closed since 2020.

Most of the speakers weighed in against the idea of handing over control of the land to DEDA until community members had more opportunity to weigh in on the best use of the site — likely a mix of housing, with some commercial development and recreational green space sprinkled into the picture.

A golf course seen from above

Duluth’s Lester Park Golf Course in July 2021.

Steve Kuchera / Duluth Media Group file photo

While the council approved a prospective development agreement with DEDA, any final transfer of ownership of the property is to be guided by the completion of a land-use plan, developed in partnership with concerned members of the public.

Durrwachter suggested that the land-use study would best be developed before the council voted to remove parkland protections from the property, rather than after the fact.

“I support housing on a portion of this site,” she said. But Durrwachter expressed reservations about the potentially prohibitively expensive cost of extending needed public infrastructure to future developments.

“If we build a new neighborhood, we need to ensure that the amount of property tax values that contribute to our property tax base is sizably greater than the cost of building and maintaining infrastructure for years to come. That will include plowing, fixing potholes and eventually repairing and replacing the water pipes,” Durrwachter said.

Dave Pagel, a member of the Duluth Area Outdoor Alliance, said he would not stake out a position either in favor or opposed to the notion of entering an agreement with DEDA, a proposal that was also packaged with a pledge to rezone at least 1,500 acres of land the city had acquired through a yearlong initiative dubbed the Strategic Public Lands Realignment Project. As part of the Lester Park Golf Course deal, the city pledged to rezone previously tax-forfeited lands with a Parkland P-1 designation, protecting them from future development.

Many of these properties are home to popular trail systems for cross-country skiers, hikers, mountain bikers and snowmobilers, and include sections of paths found at Lester Park, Piedmont, Hartley and Mission Creek.

Pagel referred to that rezoning as “a separate and must-happen transfer that has been in the works for decades” and suggested that tying a proposal to preserve land to another proposing to sell other land already in conservation would force people to choose between two competing positive ambitions.

“If the ordinance passes tonight, for people like me, it will be a lose-win situation. And if it doesn’t pass, it will be a win-lose,” he said.

But 3rd District Councilor Roz Randorf defended the pairing of the possible development at the former golf course with the long-term preservation of land that already hosts popular trail networks, balancing the community’s desire for continued conservation with the city’s need for additional housing.

“That’s why this pairing matters,” she said. “This is not an attempt to fuse unrelated issues. It’s an effort to present a complete picture: Here’s what we’re protecting permanently, and here’s what we are studying with no predetermined outcome. That balance is how we build a coalition tonight.”

At large Councilor Arik Forsman also suggested he and his colleagues were not voting on an either/or proposition.

He said he supports protecting the 1,500 acres of land in question, regardless of what happens with the Lester Park Golf Course property, following the land-use study.

“What the council is doing by tying them together is not trading one for the other,” Forsman said. “It’s accelerating the permanent protection work so that it has to get done.”

He noted that the ordinance passed Monday calls for the 1,500 acres to be placed in conservation by January 2027, even if plans allow for little development of the former golf course site.

But by asking the council to support the terms for a transfer of the golf course property before the details are available, Durrwachter said city officials were creating a situation where future approvals would require a simple majority vote for the approval of an eventual sale.

“If we vote ‘yes’ today, we throw away our protection of the 8-to-1 security before knowing the outcome of the land-use study,” she said.

Mayor Roger Reinert said there would still be ample opportunity for community input on the best use of land at the former golf course through the pending completion of a land-use study.

But he also stressed the city’s need for more housing, pointing to a recently completed analysis by Maxfield Research, indicating Duluth would need more than 8,000 additional housing units within the next decade.

Reinert described the housing challenge as all the more daunting because the city is hemmed in by its neighbors: Proctor, Hermantown and Rice Lake, as well as the St. Louis River and Lake Superior to the east.

He said Duluth has little choice but to look within its city limits, leaving it with three clear options of sites for more housing: the

former Duluth Central High School campus,

underused portions of the downtown and the idled Lester Park Golf Course property.

“The caveat is: There’s only one we have the opportunity to influence, and that’s the Lester Park Golf Course site,” Reinert said. “Tonight, let us be the city leaders who take the next step to shape both the future of Lester, as well as the future of our community. I ask you to support this next step — again, not the final step, but the next step.

“Without it, the property will continue to sit and deteriorate. And the best opportunity in a generation for us to create the housing our community so desperately is asking us to create will be lost,” Reinert said.

About the Duluth City Council

The Duluth City Council’s regular meetings are on the second and fourth Mondays of each month at 6 p.m., with agenda meetings at 5:15 p.m. each Thursday preceding a regular meeting, unless otherwise scheduled, at City Hall, Room 330. Meetings are also livestreamed and recorded for later viewing at duluthmn.gov/city-council/city-council-meetings-events/council-meeting-media.