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A core committee to administer the state's Downtown Revitalization Initiative has been set up and state officials have visited the city.
Mayor Kim Ecklund recently provided an update as to what has been happening in recent weeks for this state funding to the City Council. Ecklund said the state came down to the city two weeks ago to look at things downtown, specifically things included in the application and things the city has done.
"There is a core committee that is set up of all of the state officers, state agencies, and the stakeholders along with myself, Crystal (Surdyk) and Joe (Calimeri) from the city that kicked off last week as our first weekly meeting," Ecklund said. "We will be meeting weekly with them just to stay on track and focused on making sure we meet what the state expects us to meet."
In the coming days Ecklund said she hopes to announce the Local Planning Commission committee, which she said the state is close to approving everything for. The hope is to have the first meeting for that open at the end of the month. The LPC meetings are expected to take place during the day, with public meetings to be held at night, though Ecklund added all LPC meetings are open to the public.
"We'll hopefully have that nailed down in the next few days and get that going and moving because though we were late to be announced we are expected to be the same as everyone else," Ecklund said. "We're kind of a little bit behind so I feel that the pressure is on to us and Falconer as well with Restore, so this will be a little bit fast paced."
Ecklund said that both the city and state are happy with where everything is headed so far, and that there is still a time period for a new project to come forward. Any new projects will be presented during and after the first two LPC meetings.
In total, the city's DRI application includes 24 projects totaling $30,182,500 in proposed Downtown Revitalization Initiative spending - more than three times the $10 million the city received. Priority projects include work to make the Northwest Arena a more functional place to host events, rehabilitation of the Furniture Mart building, upper floor development at Shawbuck’s, restoration of the former Viking Temple on Washington Street, repairs to the Hotel Jamestown, and 20 additional projects. Not all projects will receive DRI funding, and not all will receive the amounts proposed in the city’s DRI application to the state.