If Duluth crime is down, why are residents afraid?

DULUTH – Eric Faust opened his coffee roastery during the height of downtown Duluth’s synthetic drug crisis, fueled by a notorious scofflaw head shop.

It was “a super low point,” for the neighborhood, he said of the time more than a dozen years ago, when drug-seeking lines snaked down Superior Street across from his shop.

Since the Last Place on Earth closed, “everything is an improvement,” said Faust, whose Duluth Coffee Co. went on to weather major street reconstruction and the COVID-19 pandemic, with the same exodus of office workers, shoppers and businesses seen across the country.

But the perception that downtown is a dangerous place, unsafe to visit during the day or night, has persisted among residents in Duluth.

Mental illness, homelessness and addiction became more evident on downtown’s streets and in its skywalk during the pandemic. Needles, bodily waste, property destruction, open drug use and panhandling have accounted for the bulk of social media outrage and letters to the city, with some afraid such behavior could increase violent crime.

Downtown worker Bill Olson wrote to the city last summer that he’s watched the neighborhood’s business booster organization, Downtown Duluth, shift its focus from economic development to a “hope nobody gets punched or stabbed organization.”

However, Duluth police data shows drug offenses and larceny are crimes that have increased most in the downtown area, not violence. And while crime in Duluth did increase last year, there are specific reasons why it spiked, when overall, a downward trend stretches back decades.

“The data doesn’t support that downtown is unsafe,” Mayor Roger Reinert said in a recent interview.

The growing number of calls to police about an “unwanted presence” speaks to a perception of citizens feeling unsafe, he said, and also a downtown changed by the pandemic, with fewer workers and more visibility of the unhoused.

The urban core is in the midst of an era shift, while residents long for the pre-pandemic past, Reinert said. And that needs recognition, he said, but “it’s not going to be that way again.”

A homeless and protester encampment was well into its third month in front of City Hall when Reinert proposed a host of new local laws last summer that targeted some top downtown quality-of-life issues. They included an attempt to criminalize homelessness, which did not ultimately become law. His plan drew a massive response on both sides of the issue.

“This anarchy has got to stop,” Superior Street bar owner Eddie Gleeson said of drug use and the encampment. He spoke at the City Council meeting where most of the ordinances passed.

Critics said the new laws, which turned acts that previously warranted fines into misdemeanors, were a reaction to discomfort and would do nothing to solve root causes of homelessness and addiction.

The number of unhoused people in Duluth has risen for decades, with a count of about 600 in 2023.

The Duluth YMCA has been in its current location in the heart of downtown since 1966. Since the pandemic, CEO Sara Cole has seen more vacant storefronts and fewer pedestrians.

“A robust community has a lot of people outside,” Cole said, but people don’t go out when they don’t feel safe.

It was warm enough on a recent Friday night that teenagers wore shorts and tanks as they danced their way to the Fitger’s complex from the Sheraton hotel on the edge of downtown.

A couple strolled to a restaurant holding hands as cyclists biked up Superior Street, and lights twinkled brilliantly inside Studio Cafe and Prove Gallery, each full of people listening to live music or taking in an exhibit opening.

The foot traffic of both nightlife-goers and loiterers was light. At the Chum emergency shelter, folks were inside before 10 p.m.

Carla Bayerl was catching live music at R.T. Quinlan’s bar on the western side of downtown, something she frequently visits the neighborhood for, along with theater.

She parks in a Superior Street ramp in the Historic Arts and Theater District and is sometimes bothered by people smoking and littering.

She’s been leery of downtown, but improvements are evident, Bayerl said.

Shane Nelson, one of the city’s busiest musicians, performed a happy-hour set at the bar. He spends nearly every night playing across the city and thinks of downtown as a place that is receptive to art and community rather than threatening.

Duluth is small enough, he said, “that we could find an answer for people living in tents on Railroad Street.”

Since Duluth’s Best Bread co-owner Robert Lillegard opened a downtown location during the pandemic, staff have dealt with drug use in its bathroom and people camping out on its stairs. A man asking for money got between Lillegard’s wife and her car door one evening, after she placed her infant inside.

“That’s a violation of your space, and it’s not comfortable,” Lillegard said. “Clearly, it’s not as bad as getting stabbed. ... But it’s easy to minimize [a crime such as theft] when you’re not the victim.”

In 2024, Duluth recorded eight homicides citywide, one of the highest tallies in its history. This includes murders and manslaughters. With six homicides in 2022, the last five years combine for Duluth’s bloodiest stretch in at least three decades.

But a deeper look shows numbers spiked because of two unusual quadruple murders in a city with historically lower crime rates. The bulk of these tallies can be traced to two separate domestic incidents where local men killed multiple members of their respective families in 2022 and 2024.

Without these unusual murders, violence statistics in Duluth would still hover around the city’s averages. However, Duluth also saw bumps in drug offenses, theft from motor vehicles and shoplifting from 2021 to 2024.

These citywide trends are also reflected in downtown Duluth, according to police data.

Duluth police also reported about a third more welfare checks in downtown from 2021 to 2024, and responded to about a fifth more medical calls, and almost 20% more calls about unwanted persons.

In that same time period, Bureau of Criminal Apprehension data show total criminal offenses fell about 27% in Duluth.

Simple assaults, which are often misdemeanors and can include domestic incidents and bar fights, did increase. But violent crime rates in Duluth — which include homicides, rape, robbery and aggravated assault – have been declining for years. They jumped in 2021 during the pandemic, and dropped again.

Property crime rates citywide — which include burglary, auto theft, arson and larceny — have been declining for a long time and rested at historic lows in 2023.

Since fall, the Police Department has recorded 39 citations using the new local laws, with public urination or defecation and neighborhood disturbances the highest tallies. The citations haven’t been charged as misdemeanors because the ordinances are not yet part of the court system, said Duluth Police Chief Mike Ceynowa.

The biggest problems downtown today are the same as they were pre-pandemic, he said, but are more visible now with fewer people filling sidewalks and skywalks, and with social media amplification.

Significant crimes may have dipped but quality-of-life crimes in Duluth, as in other cities like Bemidji, “are front and center,” Ceynowa said. “And we’re trying to outrun a narrative” that downtown is dangerous.

People living on the margins make some uncomfortable, he said, but the majority aren’t threatening, and commit lower-level crimes in their quest to survive. The new local laws are an attempt to both connect them to services and hold them accountable, he said.

The City Council recently authorized a skywalk study amid complaints, and the Police Department has moved a raft of community officers into the skywalk owing to safety perceptions. A crisis response team continues to be part of efforts downtown to help those in need, and the city’s only homeless shelter is building an $11 million, 80-bed addition.

Downtown Duluth hired an outreach worker with a background in restorative justice, who works as a liaison between businesses and the homeless. Meeting people on his daily walks, Nate Kesti has helped 70 people find housing, 100 find jobs and 55 seek treatment. He offers everything from medication reminders to hygiene products and use of his phone.

Businesses know they can call him to help de-escalate situations, and the relationships he’s built with the unhoused help make that successful, he said.

People are frustrated that plans to offer more shelter beds in Duluth are taking time, he said, but it is happening.

“Unsavory behavior doesn’t mean it’s unsafe,“ he said, and the unhoused have few choices when it comes to places where they can be.

Developer Brian Forcier’s Titanium Partners has invested $50 million in downtown real estate in the last decade.

Forcier is behind Force on 5th Avenue, an $8 million, 30-unit project near the Duluth Public Library. He is converting an office building into what he calls midterm rentals, with stays ranging from a few months to indefinite. It’s his first foray into housing downtown, seizing on a corporate need, he said, with Maurices Inc. across the street, among other major downtown companies.

“We’re pro-downtown because we see it, we feel it,” he said.

He expects demand for housing with easy access to health care, restaurants and the arts scene will grow as boomers seek low-maintenance living.

Both Duluth hospitals have invested in downtown: Essentia Health with a $915 million hospital and clinic complex and Aspirus-St. Luke’s with a new emergency department and other expansions in progress.

Health care workers are among those that need housing, Forcier said, and his company is looking to convert more office space into “for sale” properties.

Obstacles include building codes that make conversions expensive, and ensuring people are comfortable living downtown, he said.

Reinert said the city is researching ways to help developers build their projects more quickly, saving them money. It’s among cities lobbying at the State Capitol for a tax credit that would make it cheaper to convert vacant buildings, especially necessary in a city with historic buildings, Reinert said.

City leaders point to housing as the neighborhood’s and the city’s panacea. Another development of largely luxury rentals is under construction near the Essentia hospital, and the demolition of two eyesores — the Pastoret Terrace and a crumbling parking ramp — opens space for potential affordable housing projects.

Those, Reinert said, are ”real, tangible steps forward.”

Christa Lawler of the Minnesota Star Tribune contributed to this story.

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