Duluth Mayor Emily Larson on Thursday is expected to announce the Love Your Block mini-grant recipients for the remainder of 2023.
The Love Your Block program supplies small mini-grants to support resident-led projects that reduce blight in the Lincoln Park and Central Hillside Neighborhoods.
Love Your Block is part of a rich tapestry of current efforts by agencies, organizations and individuals to improve the health, safety, and quality of life for all Duluthians.
Whether residents ultimately agree with every proposal or not, the broader framework behind One Park One Vote deserves to be taken seriously because it attempts to connect housing, sustainability, environmental protection and economic development into one larger civic conversation.
In many ways, Minnesota Power became one of the hidden structural pillars underneath modern Duluth’s entire existence. Because in northern Minnesota, power literally meant power. Industrial power. Political power. Economic leverage. Regional influence. Stability. Survival.
Ness convinced Duluth to stop speaking about itself like a city waiting for the next economic funeral and start speaking about itself like a place with a future worth competing for nationally. Not perfectly. Not without backlash. Not without legitimate criticism. But undeniably.
Few people believed in that larger vision of Duluth more aggressively than Jeno Paulucci. And few people fought harder for it emotionally.
