Up the hill in Duluth, some Lake Superior College students spend close to an hour on the city bus just to get to class. A new apartment building going up right across the street aims to fix that.
On Wednesday, Oct. 14, Titanium Partners, T2 Inc., Lake Superior College and community leaders broke ground on The Legacy, a 148-unit apartment complex on the college's lower parking lot, across from its main campus. According to Northern News Now, 30 of those units will be affordable, and construction is expected to take about a year and a half.
The project has been about a decade in the making.
"Having the building, the housing on campus so you can just walk to class is next to invaluable for sure," Lake Superior College student Cole Forcier told the station.
What's going up
Titanium Partners' project page describes The Legacy as a five-story building, and says the developer is partnering with T2 Inc. to build it. The 30 affordable units will be offered at 50% of the area median income through a partnership with the Housing and Redevelopment Authority of Duluth. There will be indoor, underground parking plus additional surface parking. The developer's page had said construction could begin as early as fall 2026 and take about a year and a half, and the groundbreaking kept the project right on that track.
It isn't just for students. The developer says the building is meant to serve as a "workforce incubator," helping recruit and keep students and young professionals in fields like nursing and other health care jobs, manufacturing and the trades, and aviation, along with transfer students. The apartments will be open to students, graduates and the general public.
The site work will take some care. Titanium Partners says the design is meant to preserve the wooded character of the site by limiting tree removal and working with the natural topography, and it plans landscape buffers between the building and neighboring properties. The area is a hub for local trails, including the nearby Duluth Traverse, and the developer is touting views of the forest, the harbor and Lake Superior.
Brian Forcier, president and CEO of Titanium Partners, told WDIO the project is about helping one of the city's economic drivers. "For the college to be healthy, they need housing," he said. "It really is a domino effect that I'm happy to be a part of."
He said the name, The Legacy, was chosen for the students, so they can build their own legacies while they're in school. Forcier told WDIO the building will most likely open in spring 2028, and the company expects to start taking applications in summer 2027.
Neither the developer nor the news coverage spells out the construction contract beyond Titanium's partnership with T2 Inc., so we aren't naming a general contractor.
Forcier said the company has been working toward this for almost a decade, which made the groundbreaking feel special. "It feels really good as a developer to use my talents and abilities, just like everybody does in a job, to be able to provide housing for the students," he told WDIO. He said the college has good enrollment, "but it always could be better," and that housing is part of what helps a school grow.
Putting the building on a parking lot the college already has, right next to campus, also means the project didn't have to go hunting for a new piece of land.
Why it matters for Contractors
A five-story, 148-unit building with underground parking on a sloped, wooded Duluth site is about 18 months of solid work. That means excavation and retaining work, a concrete parking level, framing, roofing, exterior envelope, a big mechanical, electrical and plumbing package, elevators, and plenty of finish work through 2027 and into 2028.
The site constraints matter, too. Limiting tree removal and following the natural grade usually means careful earthwork and erosion control, and landscape buffers mean work for landscape crews near the end. With a spring 2028 opening target and applications starting in summer 2027, the schedule leaves little slack, and any Duluth builder knows what winter does to a schedule. Subcontractors in the Twin Ports who want a piece of it should reach out to T2 Inc. and Titanium Partners now, while packages are still being lined up.