Our View: Closing downtown to vehicles worth talking about (2024)

R.T. Quinlan’s Saloon in downtown Duluth has been in business for almost 40 years — but “will be closing down by the end of (this) year, if we do not do something,” its owners, Leah and Mark Mattila, said in a letter last week to the Duluth City Council and Mayor Roger Reinert.

“Our building is in foreclosure, and people are walking in the other direction, or avoiding our door because of the homeless population that sleeps, eats and basically lives outside our business door,” they wrote. “I am sure the City Council is well aware of the conditions downtown and (in) other areas of Duluth.”

The “something” the Mattilas propose doing to help turn things around would be as dramatic as it would be transformative for Duluth. It’s an idea that’s been tried in other downtowns with limited success.

They propose closing to vehicle traffic Duluth’s main downtown drag, Superior Street, from Fourth Avenue West to First Avenue West, making it “for walking traffic only” during summer months.

“This is all in an effort to attract new businesses and revitalize the Downtown Duluth area,” they wrote in a separate announcement to the city of a petition they launched to build public support for both closing Superior Street to vehicles and for fixing up or replacing the U.S. Bank and Second Avenue West parking ramps to accommodate displaced parking from the closed street. Their drive, they said, is additionally “an effort to assist in the growing music and artistic culture in Duluth and the surrounding area.”

To sign the petition, email the Mattilas at localyokeltwinports@gmail.com .

What would you be supporting? According to the business owners, downtown Duluth is in need of revitalization, parking is tough, and a loitering homeless population is hampering commercial operations. Three blocks of a pedestrians-only Superior Street would allow storefronts there to expand outside for the summer, “giving them much-needed space. It would allow for a more social environment and (help) pop-up businesses such as food trucks and others who are trying to make a go of a creative venture, such as an artist or musician. (And) it would encourage people to get outside and enjoy the (Lakewalk) and other amenities,” they said. “This could be a way for so many young entrepreneurs (to) get going, by simply having a vending spot on a street corner.”

Other benefits, according to the Mattilas, could include increased tax revenue for the city from new, on-street rental spots; more foot traffic for businesses; more tourism for Duluth and Northeastern Minnesota; a new rental-income opportunity for downtown property owners with street vendors needing storage space during off hours; and the encouragement of ramp parking instead of on-street parking.

Think of a pedestrians-only Superior Street as a summer-long extension of Duluth’s annual downtown Sidewalk Days, the Mattilas suggested.

“We need to do something to stop local downtown businesses from closing, and we need to do it sooner rather than later,” they wrote. “Downtown businesses are barely surviving. … We need action now, and spending money on a study only to determine if it would work cannot be done in a timely enough manner to help the business owners who are already struggling.”

Kristi Stokes, president of the nonprofit advocacy group called Downtown Duluth, is certainly open to the concept.

“This idea has been brought up from time to time, and it’s always worth a conversation and consideration,” Stokes said in an exclusive statement to the News Tribune Opinion page. “We close Superior Street for Sidewalk Days, but it takes significant time and resources to activate those blocks. When we do, it changes the overall downtown environment and makes it festive and alive with energy. If something like this were considered more often or on a longer-term scale, much thought would need to go into programming the space with activity and ensuring it’s beneficial to the businesses impacted.”

Duluth wouldn’t be the first city to try this, of course. Urban pedestrian malls date back to at least the 1950s. The Mattilas cited the Nicollet Mall in Minneapolis as an example of a “great success.”

However, 89% of pedestrian malls have failed and were removed or repurposed, according to a research paper prepared for Fresno, California, in 2013, when it was considering a similar move.

Encouragingly for Duluth, though, as the paper also pointed out, of the 11% of pedestrian malls that succeeded, most of them, 80% of them, were in cities with populations under 100,000; Duluth, of course, boasts about 86,000 people. Duluth has additional features, too, that were cited by the paper as indicators this could work here. We have universities, downtown isn’t far from the beaches of Canal Park and Park Point, the area to be closed to vehicles would be only a few blocks long, and Duluth is already a tourist destination.

Could it work? Could it help our downtown rebound after it, like so many other downtowns, was decimated by office workers relocating home during the COVID-19 pandemic shutdowns?

Could this idea help long-established businesses like R.T. Quinlan’s stay afloat?

As Stokes said, “It’s always worth a conversation and consideration.”

It is. So, let’s do at least that.

“Our View” editorials in the News Tribune are the opinion of the newspaper as determined by its Editorial Board. Current board members are Publisher Neal Ronquist, Editorial Page Editor Chuck Frederick, and Employee Representative Kris Vereecken.