City Council votes unanimously to support new medical school proposal
In its first bi-monthly meeting of October, the Duluth city council voted 9-0 in support of a resolution to offer official support for a proposal to build a new academic health science center in the downtown medical district on October 15.
The resolution says that a new medical facility would help spur development downtown, and will help support the University of Minnesota Medical School, Duluth Campus, which recently voted to expand its medical school programs from two to four years.
Councilor Arik Forsman, one of the resolution’s co-sponsors, says an expanded medical school would help University of Minnesota’s continuing efforts both in training Native medical students, as well as those interested in practicing medicine in rural areas.
“We know how important it is to have places training physicians in rural Minnesota too, in greater Minnesota, because we don’t want all of our talented students to go to the Twin Cities and then try to recruit them back. We want to keep them here” said Forsman.
The plan has the support of both Aspirus St. Lukes and Essentia Health, who’s Duluth facilities serve as training centers for local medical students.
Both providers have offered up potential sites for the proposed facility in Duluth’s medical district: Essentia favoring the site of its former St. Mary’s Hospital, which is currently undergoing demolition, while Aspirus offered a stretch of 1st Street between 8th and 9th Avenues, currently occupied by two Aspirus parking lots.
The city council made a point of staying neutral in the matter, officially favoring neither one site nor the other.
There is currently no timeline for the project. With the support of both the City and the medical providers, the matter is now up to the University of Minnesota’s board of regents, who will determine when and if a new facility will be built.