Is population-stuck Duluth finally growing?

DULUTH — Everyone loves their vacations here, the regional center on Lake Superior rich with extraordinary scenery, breweries and trails.

The 86,000-ish number on the city’s green population signs has been stuck, though, for a couple of decades.

Now a new U.S. Census Bureau estimate reveals that about 1,000 more people lived in Duluth in 2023 than in 2020, a notable upward blip in the city’s status. Construction spending and the amount of housing underway, also show an upward trend.

Mayor Roger Reinert, who took office in January, has a goal of 90,000 residents by 2030.

Reaching that long-elusive milestone would signal that Duluth has solved some top challenges, including housing, Reinert said, and the addition of 3,000-plus residents would help support infrastructure that was built for 107,000 residents. Duluth hit that peak in the 1960s.

Still, Reinert acknowledged the issues in getting there.

“The ability to live in the city of Duluth is very, very challenging right now,” the mayor said in an interview in July, citing major employers, including Cirrus and Essentia Health, struggling to hire because of the city’s dearth of single-family homes. “People look at Duluth, can’t find it, then cast a wider net.”

Real estate agents have lots of anecdotal evidence about climate refugees and young professionals choosing Duluth in recent years. But the largest recent influx of new residents appears to be remote workers.

Carson Gorecki, a regional labor analyst for the Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development (DEED), said 4% of the city’s residents in 2019 and 12% in 2022 worked remotely. And while more recent data isn’t available, he said, he suspects the current percentage is much higher, an increase largely driven by the pandemic.

City officials want to make Duluth a remote access hub. While interim city administrator Dave Montgomery said he doesn’t think the city itself should own and operate a high-speed internet system, luring broadband competition to Duluth, which is mostly served by Spectrum, could bring even more remote workers.

In 2021-23, real estate agent Brok Hansmeyer said, he helped more people find homes in Duluth than he had during the previous decade and longer.

“But it’s slowed down,” he said, adding that some clients have already returned to their previous home cities. “Maybe people just aren’t feeling that sort of [pandemic] existential crisis anymore.”

Census data points to domestic migration, rather than increasing birth rates or international migration.

A thousand new residents is a small number, just four-tenths of a percent. But it is notable, State Demographer Susan Brower said, because the city saw even less change over the preceding two decades.

Her own estimate stemming from 2020 to 2023 shows less growth than the Census Bureau’s because her office uses a different methodology. But if the Census Bureau is correct, recent Duluth growth is on par with other metropolitan cities in Minnesota, Brower said.

The 2030 census will show more complete data.

Nebraska native Brad Iwen, a photographer and filmmaker, and his young family moved to Duluth in 2022 after first visiting the year before for work, shooting along the North Shore. Having lived in Colorado, Montana and California, he fell in love with the area’s wild places and fresh water.

“We didn’t know anybody, but we absolutely love it here,” he said.

Whether Duluth can reach its population goal of 90,000 depends largely on housing, the hardest thing to build in mass quantities in this long and narrow city, especially freestanding homes. Unlike Mankato or St. Cloud — both surrounded by farm fields ripe for expansion — Duluth’s city center, where most resources are consolidated, is bordered by the lake on one side and on the other by hilly, rocky terrain that makes development an expensive headache.

“There are limits to how we [build] here,” said Karl Schuettler, vice president of Northspan, a Duluth business development consulting firm. “Duluth can’t be Fargo, where you’re just taking the next cornfield and 40 acres and turn it into a subdivision; we just don’t have that geography.”

Duluth housing projects that attempt density also often face resistance from neighbors, as in the Lakeside neighborhood last spring.

Census data shows that in many Duluth neighborhoods, households are smaller than they were in 1980, the start of the city’s precipitous population decline. More housing is needed to accommodate smaller families or those who live alone.

Duluth also lacks in rich retail options and needs to develop more of a “hunter mentality” when it comes to economic development, rather than waiting for businesses to approach, Montgomery said.

And while previous mayors have tried to dispel it, “[w]e have a historic, almost entrenched sense that kids graduate from high school or college here, and they view their opportunities 175 miles south,” said the administrator, who also worked alongside mayors Don Ness and Emily Larson.

Jobs in the city are still down nearly 6% compared with pre-pandemic levels, and the only industries that have added workers since are manufacturing and utilities.

Apartment complexes, some affordable and some market rate, are popping up in abundance, with permits for 533 units issued in the past two years. But just 117 were for single-family homes. The city is also full of housing stock built before 1930, and tiny infill lots throughout.

Along with rehabilitation of blighted homes and filling pockets of land where it can be done, city leaders see potential in western Duluth, where the land is flat, and downtown, where office space can be converted to housing.

That needs to be done thoughtfully, said Sumair Sheikh, director of LISC Duluth, a neighborhood development nonprofit. He said new housing should be mixed-income and not just for high-earners, or else residents already there risk being displaced.

With limited space to expand, more multifamily complexes like condos and apartments will be necessary to reach 90,000, said housing policy expert Noah Hobbs, who works for the nonprofit One Roof Community Housing.

Hobbs said the city has more in common with Rust Belt towns, such as Flint, Mich., and Gary, Ind., than Mankato or other similarly sized regional centers. Like Flint and Gary, Duluth was built on industry that fueled prosperity before plummeting into economic distress.

The city’s reputation needed polishing, Hobbs said, and it’s now seeing the fruits of efforts by previous mayors to market Duluth positively and attract new residents.

“I think we’re positioned to continue to grow and have continued success if we choose to,” he said.