Who lives in Downtown Duluth, Minnesota
Part of the Downtown Duluth neighborhood guide. Back to the full guide.
Downtown's residents are overwhelmingly renters, and the household mix follows from the housing rather than the other way around. In the tract covering downtown and Canal Park, 88.5 percent of occupied units were rented and four fifths of all units sat in buildings of five or more.
Three broad groups make up most of it. There are older residents in senior and subsidized buildings, which are a substantial share of downtown's unit count and the main reason the tract's median gross rent reads $416, far below any market rent in central Duluth. There are working-age single-person and couple households in market-rate apartments and converted upper floors, many of them working in the medical district, the courthouse and county offices, or remotely. And there is a small ownership population in condominiums and lofts, closer in profile to the Canal Park condominium market than to anything residential on the hillside.
Household sizes are small, one and two-person households dominate, and there are very few children. That is a statement about the housing stock, not about anyone's choices: there are almost no family-sized units downtown and no attendance-area school inside the district.
What is genuinely growing is the converted-upper-floor population, and the 122 apartments at Old Central are the clearest evidence of it.
Who lives here next door
Directly across Interstate 35 and connected by the Lake Place lid and the skywalk, the tourism and lakefront district with the region's other flat-ground condominium market.
Central HillsideImmediately up the hill, downtown's own residential neighborhood, with conventional housing at some of the lowest prices in the city.
East End / EndionNortheast along the lake, historic housing with lake views and a walk or short ride into the district.
Lincoln ParkWest about six minutes, the Craft District, with the city's fastest-changing commercial street and its lowest prices.
Park PointSouth across the lift bridge on Minnesota Point, the sand-beach neighborhood whose residents pass through downtown to reach everything.