Duluth?s Lincoln Park preps for a $25 million RAISE grant, with help from Damon Farber Landscape Architects.
By Sarah Chase Shaw
Community input informed design priorities for Lincoln Park?s Craft District. Photo by Damon Farber Landscape Architects.
From outer space, few North American features stand out more prominently than the Great Lakes. Of the five, Superior is by far the wildest and certainly the largest. Roughly the size of Maine, it dominates the steep water-to-hilltop landscape of Duluth, Minnesota, a city of approximately 85,000 people located at the westernmost tip of Superior.
With one of the largest inland harbors in the world, Duluth?s industrial shoreline today is a maze of rail lines and highways, their sprawling latticework a significant contributor to the city?s disconnection from its waterfront. Interstate 35, a north?south corridor connecting Laredo, Texas, to Duluth reaches its terminus here, but not before it creates a distinct barrier between downtown and the waterfront. When it was nearing completion in the 1970s, a decade-long pause resulted in an overhaul of the highway as it passes through sections of downtown. In a design noted for its progressive approach, tunnels and decks were installed?the result of citizen input that began in 1959?creating new urban green spaces connecting downtown to the Cross City Trail, the Lakewalk, and Canal Park. It was a great idea at the time that, some say, didn?t live up to the expectations of a major waterfront ...