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Duluth officials review Spirit Mountain plan to replace two aging lifts with single new chair; Leitner Poma recommended
Summary
Spirit Mountain leaders told the Duluth City Council a long-planned project would replace two aging lifts with one modern four-person chairlift; city staff and the resort recommend Leitner Poma after an RFP. The project is tied to a $13 million state appropriation that requires a local match the city will bond for, with ongoing debt service split (
Anne Glumack, executive director of Spirit Mountain, told the Duluth City Council the resort is pursuing a plan to replace two aging chairlifts with a single new four-person lift and that city staff ranked Leitner Poma of America as the top proposer in a recently completed request for proposals.
The proposal, presented in a committee-of-the-whole session, traces back to a 2020 Spirit Mountain Task Force and a 2021 consultant report by the SE Group that recommended roughly $24 million in capital improvements to preserve the 50-year-old facility’s long-term financial stability. In 2023 the state appropriated $13 million toward that work; the appropriation requires a local match, and the city previously passed resolutions authorizing bonds for the local $13 million match. According to Glumack and a city staff member answering council questions, the local bond will be repaid with tourism tax proceeds for half of the debt and Spirit Mountain will pay the remaining half.
Spirit Mountain has already implemented several of the task force…
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