R.I.P. Merritt Park Recreation Center Building
This week the field house at Merritt Park joined the growing list of historic West Duluth buildings demolished in recent years. The 2,016-square foot building was constructed in 1939.
This week the field house at Merritt Park joined the growing list of historic West Duluth buildings demolished in recent years. The 2,016-square foot building was constructed in 1939.
Artist Tom Napoli recreates Duluth on the side of the Tortoise and Hare Footwear store in West Duluth.
In its series The Slice, WDSE-TV presents short “slices of life” that capture the events and experiences that bring people together and speak to what it means to live up north.
The West Theater looked nothing like its movie palace glory days when Duluth Reader publisher Bob Boone bought the building in 2016.
According to this postcard, Duluth Motel sat in some mysterious forest, perhaps offering the only toilet available for miles and miles. In reality, “Northwest’s Most Luxurious Motel” was near Denfeld High School and surrounded by West Duluth homes and businesses. A lush, undeveloped hillside was indeed in the distance, though not very similar looking to the illustration on the postcard.
The Spirit Valley business district in West Duluth took a serious hit in 2018 when Kmart closed but business leaders and city officials believe the area is ripe for a makeover that could match successful redevelopment work in Lincoln Park.
An alternative weekly newspaper publisher currently renovating a West Duluth movie theater has purchased a second historic but mostly forgotten theater adjacent to his current project.
This postcard of Duluth’s “municipal zoo,” now known as Lake Superior Zoo, was mailed 70 years ago today — Sept. 8, 1948.
The Kmart store in my neighborhood closed last weekend. Now there’s a giant empty space in the Spirit Valley Mall in West Duluth, with a faded area above the doors where a sign once read: “Big Kmart.”
It took more than 30 years for the store to run itself out of business, and I’d probably need a degree in finance and a long look inside the books of parent company Sears Holdings Corporation to ever understand. How does a neighborhood’s only department store — a place that’s known for always having lines at the cash registers — go out of business?
The answer to that question might be that retail stores are struggling in general, and any store with massive overhead costs that provides a lousy shopping experience doesn’t stand a chance. And the West Duluth Kmart was a lousy shopping experience.
The lines at Kmart perhaps weren’t due to the high volume of traffic, but instead the understaffing at the store. Target or Wal-Mart might have a dozen checkouts open at once; Kmart seldom had more than two.
I tasted T-Icy Roll Ice Cream yesterday at 4602 Grand Ave., next to an old favorite, Zhong Hua.
An iconic and ruggedly unique surplus store in the heart of West Duluth has been put up for sale as its longtime owner prepares to fight a serious health issue.
The cribbage board above might not have been made in Duluth, but the box it came in was manufactured at 4902 Oneota St. in West Duluth.
Construction is ready to begin at Irving Park in West Duluth. A news release from the city’s Parks and Recreation division specifies May 7 as the date KTM Paving, Inc. will launch the first phase of a $1.1-million revitalization plan.