The Duluth City Council met on Monday, June 16, 2025, beginning with a Committee of the Whole presentation on the Imagine Downtown initiative, followed by the regular council session at 6:00 PM. Key actions included adoption of a policy on development incentives for tax increment financing (TIF), passage of a consent agenda covering 35 resolutions, approval of a resolution supporting comprehensive zoning and code modernization, and the first reading of an ordinance to establish a Duluth Transportation Commission. Councilor Mike Mayou, who resigned effective June 30, 2025, received tributes from colleagues during the meeting.
Committee of the whole this evening. Thank you. Thank you, President Tomonik and Counselors. Great to be here. We wanted to provide you a little bit of an update on our imagined downtown initiative. I think many of you know we have been working on this since uh started it last summer and really looking at trying to develop a five-year plan for our downtown. Um we will have our consultants that will be joining us as well virtually to give you a bit of an update. One of the things that I just really want to go back and give you a little bit of the the background again is um you know many downtowns across the country have faced some of the same challenges we have since the pandemic, and that is dealing with uh fewer people in our downtown, fewer workers in the downtown. So really what's the future of our downtown? Where does it lie? How do you activate those spaces? And uh we know a lot of that will be in residential, so we've had many conversations about that. And what we've really said is we want the community to be involved in helping us to really develop that plan, that vision where we see our downtown in the next five years. So we took on um this initiative and really looked at being inclusive, ensuring safety and comfort for all, and looking at our downtown more like a neighborhood. Um you'll hear um probably Jay from our consulting team talk about the phrase neighborhoodification, and so that will be something that we'll like to share about today too. Um, a little bit of how this has come together. Um, we've had a steering committee made up of about 16 people who have helped lead this effort as well, including Councillor Ros Randorf has been on our steering committee, so we've been pleased to be able to have her input uh from that perspective. We've had city representatives, county representatives, uh folks from social services, as well as business professionals. So we've really tried to have a real broad group on our steering committee, and now it's going to be getting to the point where we have to start doing the more heavy lifting here locally because we'll be getting into some working groups and hopefully the implementation of this. So I would say right now we are probably at about 90% of being able to provide uh uh draft plan to all of you, and we thought it would be a great time to be able to present it to the council and share a little bit more as to some of the things that are coming out of this, some of the strategies, and hopefully maybe even mention a big move or two. So um I brought boards. You may have seen some of these boards um from our past presentation, but it's always fun to be able to share some of that, talk about some of the catalytic projects that we've maybe highlighted, as well as really talk about you know the goals of us really looking at our downtown as a neighborhood, being inclusive and making sure that our businesses are really vibrant down here and that it's a safe place for everyone. So with that, um we do have our consulting team from MIG with us, uh Sue Garner and Jay Rankins, and I am going to turn it over to them to be able to start things off. Now, we did hear we're going to hope if you guys have a presentation that it does show up correctly because um the monitors were doing some mirroring uh before. So we're gonna take a look and see what it looks like, Jay, but hopefully everything will come across well. So with that, I think I am turning it over to Jay. Yes, um, for some can you can hear me okay? Yes. All right. Um I cannot, I'm not seeing video, so hopefully we can make this work. Um I'm not sure why it's not coming through, but um are you all are you sharing the presentation on your end? Or do you need us to? Um we're not seeing the presentation right now. Do you have a way to share that, Alyssa? She hasn't been sent anything yet. So is there a way for Sue? Do you mind sharing? Oh no, I don't know. Yeah. Sorry, Scale set up here. So while we're waiting, I'll also mention um we just came from a steering committee meeting right before this. Um so it was a great opportunity for members to be able to have some input on some of the the draft plan, just the final things that we've really been looking at. And you know, just know that there are some things where we all didn't agree, and so this was a way for us to be able to work with MIG and to determine how do we come to a consensus just even with the steering committee for all of us to say this is the direction we think should be presented to the community, and it's also based upon what we've heard from the community. Yeah. Is it working to pull up the presentation? Um looks like I need permission. It says meeting organizers and presenters can share only. All right, we have IT help here. So we'll get that going for you. And I can also send it to Alyssa right now if we need to.