City residents should have cautious optimism following the announcement that Jamestown has received another $10 million Downtown Revitalization Initiative grant from New York state.

City officials put together a pretty impressive application. For that, Crystal Surdyk, city development director, and her team deserve a lot of credit. Surdyk and Jason Kulaszewski, city principal planner, had talked publicly about the plan having 24 distinct projects in the past, but simply having 24 projects doesn’t guarantee a big impact on downtown. Seeing the 24 projects makes one think that the right mix of projects could have a lasting impact downtown.

Two things stand out.

The first is that the hardest part of this DRI plan will be paring it down. There are more than $30 million in DRI funding requests and only $10 million to spend. It seems pretty clear that the Northwest Arena’s transformation into a venue better suited to hosting major entertainment acts – an issue since the arena was first built – is likely to get funding. We’d be surprised if Ramsey Agriculture didn’t receive DRI funding given how far that project has come in a relatively short time. Those two projects account for $2.9 million, or roughly 30% of the DRI grant. Another $2 million is requested as part of a $40 million redevelopment of the Furniture Mart building in a partnership between the Gebbie Foundation and Meritocracy Venture LLC. Those three projects encompass 49% of the DRI funding. It will be interesting to see what gets funded and at what levels – and then how successful the city is in finding other sources of funding for projects that don’t receive DRI funding.

We were also struck by some of the projects that aren’t necessarily brick-and-mortar projects. Parking has been such a discussion point over the past five or six decades that it shouldn’t have been surprising to see a $1 million parking modernization program included in the DRI application. Another $2 million is proposed as part of a $4.9 million project to improve streetscapes and traffic patterns at North Main and Harrison streets and the arterial at Washington Street and North Main Street. That project would reconfigure traffic patterns and intersection geometry at North Main and Harrison streets and North Main and Washington streets with traffic calming and pedestrian refuge islands, upgrade signals along North Main Street through downtown and make streetscapes at the Five Points gateway with new sidewalks, street trees, lights and wayfinding. There is also a downtown streetlighting program proposed and an interesting $42.9 million redevelopment of Brooklyn Square that includes demolition of a building and reestablishment of historic traffic patterns.

In 2016, it felt like Jamestown was racing to put together its DRI application. It was the state’s first round of DRI funding and no one knew how many rounds there were going to be back then. The 2026 application is impressive for its breadth. It’s obvious the city has time to engage in some deep conversations and put in a lot of work behind the scenes as the DRI application was prepared.

This is a time for cautious optimism. We have a history with DRI projects. Many projects that seem promising now won’t come together in the future. How the city manages those disappointments will ultimately determine how successful this round of DRI funding is when we look back on it 10 years from now.