DECC Looking to Improve Aging Infrastructure

DULUTH, Minn. — The Duluth Entertainment Convention Center is looking to improve some of its aging infrastructures.

This comes after the DECC experienced an ammonia leak over the summer prompting officials to look more closely at the other structural issues the DECC has been having over the years.

This has led executive Director, Dan Hartman, to propose $8 million in repairs.

These include an electric transformer, an ice chiller in the DECC arena, and roof repair.

All of which Hartman says are essential to make the facilities in the DECC run efficiently and preserve the convention center.

“We’re not asking to build a new building. I’m asking to invest repair dollars into a facility that the state of Minnesota helped pay for originally. We are unlike a lot of facilities where we are not the city of Duluth’s convention center. We are the state of Minnesota’s,” DECC Executive Director, Dan Hartman says.

Although there is no timetable for the repairs to take place, Hartman says sooner the better because he says the DECC is a hub that drives a large amount of the economy in Duluth year after year.

“When we can’t have certain conventions that has a huge layering or wave effect. Where all of a sudden all of these hotels don’t sell the rooms, all of these restaurants don’t get booked. All of this has a whole cascading negative effect for the community when the DECC can’t operate at its full level,” Hartman says.

Hartman is hoping the state will fund the improvements through bonding dollars.