DULUTH, Minn. — After six years of work and a $6.4 million investment, Duluth’s popular Brighton Beach is back.

On Monday afternoon, Duluth officially reopened its reconfigured Lake Superior park with a ribbon-cutting ceremony.

The project extended the Lakewalk to the shore, separating it from Brighton Beach Drive, where the road had previously been drained.

Now the road has moved inland and the Lakewalk has its own area devoid of motorized traffic.

Before the project, Brighton Beach Drive was repeatedly hit by storms and rebuilt many times, as Jim Filby Williams, the city’s director of parks, libraries and properties, recalled.

“Our park maintenance and street maintenance staff have probably never had a closer relationship with Sisyphus than we have in this park,” Filby Williams said, referring to the repeated damage the park has suffered in recent years and the repeated repairs that have followed. In the Greek myth, Sisyphus pushes a boulder up a hill, but watches the boulder roll back down each time he approaches the top. This happens to Sisyphus over and over again throughout eternity.

Filby Williams evoked this scene just six years ago.

“For the third time in three years, much of Brighton Beach Road has been destroyed again following another Lake Superior storm disaster. “Park maintenance and street personnel were once again preparing to clear debris and repair damage, with the demoralizing knowledge that they would return in the future to do the same expensive, labor-intensive cleanup and rebuilding,” the lawsuit said.

Acting as a gateway to the North Shore, the redesigned park offers a much brighter future, something Filby Williams predicts.

“I am very confident that this reconstructed park will be resilient and resilient even in the face of the more intense and frequent storms we see with climate change,” he said.

Filby Williams said the renovated park provides a safer environment for walkers, cyclists and motorists. It also offers better access to the lake for the general public.

Filby Williams said the city is not required to comply with Americans with Disabilities Act standards simply because of legal obligation.

“But serving all of our citizens is a value of the city of Duluth. So we’re really excited about improving accessibility because we know it helps people with disabilities enjoy the park. “But it also makes it much easier to access and enjoy the park for many people who do not have a disability per se but are aging and experience various physical limitations.”

Filby Williams predicts the community will be pleased with the results.

“The opportunity was not only to remove infrastructure from danger, but also to take the opportunity to naturalize the waterfront,” he said, noting that the city has reopened tributary streams that had previously been diverted through culverts.

Mayor Roger Reinert acknowledged that the Brighton Beach project required lengthy staff planning and credited his predecessor, Emily Larson, with bringing it to fruition.

Filby Williams said work to stabilize the city’s shoreline and recreational facilities has not yet been completed. Next year, staff hopes to rebuild the Lakewalk in downtown Duluth from the corner of the lake to 26th Avenue East at a cost of about $10 million.

Even after Duluth completes its waterfront work, Filby Williams said the city will face a “much larger increase” in improving upland parks and properties to better withstand more frequent flash floods.

Park Planner Cliff Knettel said the city has received a lot of questions about why the Brighton Beach project is taking so long.

“The reality is that this involved four separate projects. First, there was the road extension. The second was improvements to the coastline. The third was parking improvements. And the fourth was the road. They all involved different funding sources (state, federal, and local) and are not always 100% compatible. But the fact that we were able to get them in line within a four-year period was huge, otherwise it could have taken a decade or more,” Knettel said.

The city covered about $4.1 million of the bill.