(upbeat music) (upbeat music continues) (upbeat music continues) - Welcome to Almanac North.

I'm Maarja Hewitt.

Tonight we are taking a look at city planning, the thought, logistics, and impact of how our regional cities operate.

We're joined in studio by Duluth City Planning and Development director Chad Ronchetti.

Later via Zoom, we will chat with Ely Planning and Zoning Administrator Scott Kochendorfer about how Ely hopes to expand and what the city does with the tourist boom.

Also, in studio, we will speak with Joe Lane from the University of Minnesota Duluth about how transportation and geography impact city planning.

That's what's coming up tonight on Almanac North.

Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers, together with the Wisconsin Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection, announced today that 18 projects are receiving grant funding for the 2024 commercial nitrogen optimization pilot program, or NOPP.

These grants aim to refine and enhance the understanding of new methods that optimize commercial nitrogen apply to agricultural fields, helping to protect vital soil and water resources.

The NOPP was designed to encourage agricultural producers to develop innovative approaches to optimize commercial nitrogen for at least two growing seasons.

The selected producers must collaborate with a University of Wisconsin system institution which will monitor the grant project on site and conduct commercial nitrogen optimization field studies.

The grant structure allowed agricultural producers to work together and apply under a single application with each individual producer eligible to receive a maximum award of up to $40,000.

In addition, a total of $200,000 will be awarded to the UW system for monitoring and research assistance.

For those interested, additional information on the commercial nitrogen optimization pilot grant program can be found on DATCP's website.

(upbeat music) (upbeat music continues) (upbeat music continues) Now I am joined in the studio with Chad Ronchetti, director of Duluth City Planning and Economic Development Department.

Thank you, Chad, for joining us tonight.

- Happy to be here.

- Well, maybe we start with an overview of planning and development.

It's kind of a broad department where you have like the future vision and then also the day to day of zoning and things like that.

- Yeah, so we have 42 staff in the department.

We cover a lot of ground.

It all starts with the long range planning at the very front end.

The way I view the department is really a suite of service, so it's kind of like a continuum of services that happen.

And at the front end is that long range planning piece where we do a comprehensive plan.

We go out into the community, we identify goals and objectives and the values of the community, and all of that input gets put into our comprehensive plan, kind of as our guiding document for who we are as Duluth and what we value.

And then we take that document and we use that to guide all of the decisions that we make going forward.

From there, it kind of goes into community development and economic development.

Community development is working with nonprofit partners, driving federal and state investment into disenfranchised communities, impoverished communities, and helping give them a leg up and help to break the cycle.

And then economic development is about private investment and creating jobs and driving a good solid business climate and those kinds of things.

But both of them are about investment into the community.

And from there it goes into planning and that's where we use zoning code to help make sure that the investment is following the comprehensive plan and doing so in an orderly fashion.

From there, it flips to state code where we review actual construction plans to make sure that they're aligned with the state code, being built orderly and lawfully according to the state.

Then we have construction inspections that make sure that what is being built is being constructed according to the approved plans.

And hopefully at the end we end up with a building and a certificate of occupancy that is really a physical manifestation of the values and objectives that we identified during that comprehensive plan.

- So many layers to planning - And many years of effort in some of these projects.

- So the city of Duluth is a very long city that's on a hill, you know, it's like what, 26, 27 miles by 3 miles wide.

How does the unique geography and like topography of Duluth impact like urban planning and those decisions you make?

- Yeah, that's a great question.

I like to think of Duluth as kind of the Chile of Lake Superior, right?

We take up a huge swath of waterfront, and yet we're super thin and we're on a major incline.

And so that has impacts from bedrock to, I think there's 42 streams or 43 streams that come down the hill.

But it's also part of what creates this sense of place that we as Duluthian have come to love and what makes us feel so connected to our community.

But it does create challenges for development.

If it's green in Duluth, it's probably granite, right?

Or it's wetlands or there's some other reason that it's not built.

And it also complicates factors like view shed.

People wanna build tall buildings in downtown and new tall buildings, but the people up the hill don't like that so much because there goes their view, right?

Or it changes their view to be different.

And so it certainly adds a certain dynamic, but I think that's part of the challenge that everybody loves in the department is helping to protect and keep the uniqueness of Duluth and its geography while also investing in it and helping to grow it and make it a wonderful place to be.

- A hot topic for Duluth always tends to be housing, whether it be affordable or market rate.

And we had a Christie Stokes with Downtown Duluth on a few weeks ago.

And she was talking about, you know, working on making more housing available downtown to have people there kind of reinvigorate the downtown.

So what's in the works right now for housing downtown, but also in our very long city to hit both ends?

- Yeah, the downtown core is a priority for Mayor Reinert, a priority for this administration.

And the downtown post-COVID I has been really tough just all across the country.

So we are hyper-focused on the downtown, you know, not to alienate our northern and western neighbors, of course.

But downtown is the beating heart of our community.

And if you don't have a healthy beating heart, then you don't have a healthy, sustainable future.

So for housing, I firmly believe, and I think Mayor Reinert does as well, that having housing in the downtown is the answer.

We've seen that play out across the country and other successful downtown revitalizations.

So getting those roofs before we invest in retail, because the retail tends to follow the roofs.

So if we can drive residents down there, we just had the Zenith open up, which is the old central high school in downtown.

There's 120 some units, I think, in that building.

We've got a couple more large projects planned for the redevelopment of First Street, which I'm super excited about.

There's 170 units planned for that.

Mayor Reinert is huge on finding ownership options.

Finding ownership options is a little bit difficult, be in a high dense area, in a high density area like a downtown, but it's definitely a top priority for us.

- And what are the city's long-term goals?

A final question to leave us with here for urban development and how does that kind of align with the vision, overall vision of Duluth?

- Yeah, the long-term is increased tax base, of course.

We're a long linear community, like you mentioned, but we're built to accommodate 120 to 130,000 people.

And so with the population of 89, 86, 87,000 people, it's tough to afford to keep that infrastructure up to date and functional.

So sustainable tax base is important, but also being mindful of our community and again, protecting that sense of what Duluth is and the feeling.

So, yeah.

- Wonderful.

Well, Chad, thank you so much for joining us today.

- Of course, thank you for having me.

(gentle music) (gentle music continues) (gentle music continues) (gentle music continues) - Next up via Zoom, Ely City Planning and Zoning Administrator Scott Kochendorfer.

Scott, thank you so much for joining us.

Can you give us an overview of what urban planning is and what Ely's overall goals are as a city?

- Yeah, Ely's current urban planning and development strategies, I mean, we currently use, we have a city comprehensive plan that we use to follow.

The comprehensive plan isn't required from a city our size, but the city has brought it upon themselves many years ago to come up with this comprehensive plan to help guide the development of the community.

And like I said, really use it as a guide to take the city where they want it to go.

And we've seen a lot of inquiries for businesses.

Our biggest challenge as far as any community right now, you know, housing.

And so just expanding where housing's allowed, you know, especially public housing and things like that, making it more accessible for people to build houses or build the housing developments as well as businesses.

Again, the needs of businesses have expanded over the years.

So there's, you know, sometimes people might call and ask if, you know, hey, I want to build this business or have this business in town, is it allowed?

And it may or may not be on our list.

And so it's difficult to steer people away that wanna provide businesses to the community.

So we wanna try to make sure that we're having an all encompass lists and going over that list frequently to make sure that we're incorporating everything we can to have successful businesses in the community.

And again, residential properties as well.

We wanna encourage growth, you know, especially with the neighborhoods.

- How do you go about attracting tourists or dealing with the tourism swell during your busy months?

- Yeah, so I mean, our busiest months are certainly probably, you know, we'll just do the generic Memorial weekend through Labor Day weekend, right?

We get churches, we get schools, we get busloads of people.

We get people from out of state, people from out of the country because Ely is the gateway to the boundary waters, right?

And so how do we accommodate that?

I mean, we have, I couldn't tell you the the exact number, but we have many motels, we have a couple hotels, we have camping and those are full in the summer.

And so how do you...

When you tell people Ely, a lot of times you don't even need to say anything else.

It's just Ely, right?

Oh, the boundary waters.

And you know, we have ATV snowmobile trails.

They just recently completed the paved bike trail that goes from here to Tower, and they're looking at expanding that to kind of, you know, with the Mesabi Trail to connect all of Northern Minnesota so you could bike from Duluth to Ely and stop on the way, right?

Our chamber of commerce does a great job of getting information out there.

The other big thing that the Ely community has is civic organizations.

The city doesn't really have to even put on a lot of these events.

There are so many organizations that come to the city that wanna put events on and they're nonstop, you know, from May through September, even into October.

And, you know, like I said, that the population of the town probably doubles if not triples.

And, you know, everybody's inviting.

It's, we find room for everybody.

- What efforts have you put forth to attract new businesses to Ely?

- Sure.

I think the biggest benefit that we've had in the last several years with projects coming through is making business owners aware that there is outside funding.

Because usually funding is one of the biggest hurdles for businesses, especially you come into a town where a storefront maybe has sat vacant for many years and there's, you know, the building's in disarray, there's gonna be walls that need to be taken out and that isn't, you know, it's not cheap, especially nowadays.

And they might have to run some water and things like that.

So what we've, you know, really the IRRRB up in the Iron Range, the money from IRRRB has really been a huge benefit for especially building restoration.

So taking these buildings that, again, weren't being used and bringing them up to speed with the times and still restoring them back to what they looked like in the original 50 to 100 years ago.

And so that takes a burden off of somebody that not only wants to start a business because the financial obligation to start a business alone, you know, can be substantial.

So then when you're looking at, okay, you know, what buildings do we have available?

Oh, okay, well I have to stick a lot of money into this.

So if we can lessen the burden on that and get somebody into a usable space, that helps our central, what we kind of call our central business district has really grown over the last several years.

And lots of times we have businesses on the bottom and maybe apartments on the top as well.

And so having the ability to have businesses and residential spaces all in one is really huge.

And yeah, just having those incentives for people to start a business here in Ely and the community and the council is very supportive of businesses in Ely, you know.

- What are the key challenges Ely is facing as you continue to plan your urban development?

- So I think our biggest infrastructure or development challenge is space.

So Ely, a relatively small footprint as far as square miles, we're kind of in a rectangular box.

And there is a need for that.

You know, some of our open spaces are wetland, some of 'em, you know, again, with the terrain or rocky, so they're not buildable.

So we might have, you know, you might look at a map and say, well, this is a really nice 40 acre site until you actually go out there and try to walk it and it's rocky and marshy and you know, you'd have to spend a lot of money to try to go in there and build.

Like I said earlier, it's fortunate that city does own a lot of land and several years ago, we annexed in some property to the west side of town, which is actually really close to the apartment development that I was talking about earlier.

So we do have the ability to expand on that direction.

And in the future, we've had some properties want to tie into city sewer and water.

So we have annexed in some of tthose properties because we do have a lot of properties that are really close to the city that are still on well, well water and septic.

And so we provide that service of bringing them into city sewer and water.

- Well, Scott, thank you so much for joining us.

We really appreciate it.

(upbeat music) (upbeat music continues) (upbeat music continues) We are now joined by Joe Lane from the University of Minnesota Duluth.

Joe is focused on urban and transportation geography within UMD's urban and regional studies program.

Joe, thank you so much for joining us.

- Thank you for having me.

- So urban and transportation geography, how does it fit into the puzzle of city planning?

- Well, transportation and transportation systems are a lot like arteries in your body.

If the arteries get clogged, there's dire situations.

So having a transit system that allows people to move in the city and move out of it, move around the city and using multi modes, it's gonna make that more of a community.

It's gonna make the city more vibrant.

And really it's certainly a necessary to have a functioning city.

- How do you highlight the need for that within your classes and to your students?

What are kinda the elements of your classes and how you teach it?

- So we tend to look at kind of disincentives for driving alone, let's say commuting to work by yourself.

And we try to focus on incentives for using multi modes of transit and using public transit.

So we like to focus on walkability of cities.

In order to have a successful or a functioning transit system, you also have to consider going from your original location to the actual system.

So you have to have sidewalks that connect people to the bus stations.

You have to have bus stations to begin with.

The bus stations must be well lit.

You have to have people feel safe when they are attempting to take public transit.

So much of what we look at is kind of from the city density kind of a perspective.

And we focus on sort of getting people out of their car, looking at other ways in which they can get around.

That really in turn would probably make them a lot healthier and the community itself would also benefit.

- Sure.

What are some of the key challenges cities face in terms of transportation and urban planning, and how can we address them?

- So cities like Duluth, medium to small size cities, they have issues with density.

So if you look at, for example, downtown Duluth, it is a walkable area.

It wasn't necessarily designed for the car, but much of the surrounding area is designed for the automobile and that infrastructure's pretty hard to change.

So you see, it is very challenging for cities like Duluth to kind of reinvent the urbanization that they have had in previous years.

- Because your downtown is walkable.

But to get there, you might need a vehicle or a good bus system to get you down there.

- In a lot of cases, the downtowns in many Midwestern cities are walkable, largely because they were constructed before the advent of the automobile.

And as you get away from the centers of towns, they become less and less walkable.

And in turn you see the densities go down and that really presents a kind of a traditional challenge for public transit systems.

- How has COVID-19 impacted urban transportation systems?

- So, COVID-19 was a major challenge for transit systems, and we saw ridership really decrease during the pandemic.

Being that we're a few years out from the pandemic, now we are seeing an increase in the ridership.

And much of the response post-COVID has been positive, where we do see an increase in public transit ridership in most places.

- How do we incorporate considerations for like, pedestrian and cyclists infrastructure and traffic and urban planning so that we're promoting active transportation?

- I think much of the design to promote active transportation would be related to parking.

So if you have a city block that has good access for bikes, good access for pedestrians, and might still have good access for cars, but it's limited a bit, I think you would promote changing the stigma of public transit, where you would see people realizing, hey, you know, I could probably walk a couple of blocks and get on a bus than I would in my community spending time in my car and trying to find a parking spot and dealing with traffic.

So I think the design of the city is really a big part of that.

- What are some challenges or opportunities you see in Duluth for urban transportation?

- So we have a unique design of a city.

It's obviously very long and very narrow, and that does present benefits for a public transit system.

I think with the relatively recent change in the Duluth Transit Authority, the buses, we have began to kind of utilize single transit lines that provide increased frequency for certain routes.

So based on kind of the design of Duluth being very unique, I think we have unique opportunities here.

- So because it's long, the buses are able to make trips back and forth.

- Most of, well, the population of Duluth is spread out over a longer area, and it's not really very wide, very far from the lake.

So having that density in kind of a relative line is gonna be a benefit for transit because in many cases, people wouldn't have to walk as far to get to the system.

- Sure.

And what do you think are the most important trends or developments in urban and transportation geography right now?

- Well, I feel I have to answer that with technology.

- [Maarja] Yeah.

- So a smartphone is almost vital for public transit systems in our society today.

Today you can look at real time data to see exactly where your bus is.

You don't really have to kind of guess anymore.

You can use the apps to increase your communications with the bus system and be able to access it better.

So yes, I think technology is a big part of that.

And I think changing the stigma on how people just view public transit.

- Well, Joe, thank you so much for joining us tonight.

- Thank you.

- Well, before we go, here's a look at what you might be up to this weekend.

Running throughout the weekend at the Zeitgeist Arts building is the 2024 Minnesota Film Festival.

Guests can look forward to screenings, post film conversations with filmmakers, producers and talent, community events, networking opportunities and more.

Programming will feature a variety of local, national, and international films.

The Mesabi Symphony Orchestra has two end of season performances coming up.

Hear them perform Brahms' German Requiem Saturday, April 6th at 7:00 PM at the Rock Ridge High School Performing Art Center in Virginia, as well as Sunday, April 7th at 2:00 PM at the Moose Lake Community School.

Ticket information is available online.

And also running through the weekend is the Arrowhead Home and Builder Show at the DECC, the largest show of its kind in the region.

It's the place to learn about the latest trends and technology for your home.

The event also includes DIY seminars, face painting, and food and drinks.

Tickets at the door are $12, $7 for 17 and under, and children five and under are free.

Well, that's quite a lineup and it's just a small slice of what's happening this weekend.

I'm Maarja Hewitt.

Thank you for joining us on Almanac North.

I'll see you all next time.

Goodnight.

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