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Posted Jan 15, 2017, 11:35 PM
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Registered User
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Join Date: Apr 2014
Location: Wilmington
Posts: 472
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$585,000 State grant awarded to Wilmington hotel project at 13 x Market (and a few other projects)
http://www.delawareonline.com/story/...ants/96392018/
Quote:
Another $38.6 million worth of redevelopment projects in five downtowns will move forward, thanks in part to support from Delaware taxpayers.
Gov. Jack Markell on Tuesday announced 16 commercial, residential and mixed-use projects throughout the state that will share nearly $3.6 million in state grants provided by the Downtown Development Districts program.
Created in 2014, the initiative's goal is to use a relatively small amount of public funding to attract larger investments from private developers in central corridors blighted by vacant buildings and economic stagnation. Including the projects announced Tuesday, the DDD program has awarded $17.7 million in grants to help support about $329 million in private investment.
"In an ideal world, you wouldn't have to put any public money in," Markell said. "But when you get this kind of thing going and other private investors see the kind of investment being here, they will follow."
Wilmington, Dover and Seaford were the first districts chosen for the program. Five more were added last summer: Smyrna, Milford, Harrington, Georgetown and Laurel.
Approved development projects in those downtowns can receive up to 20 percent of eligible construction costs in the form of rebates awarded by the Delaware State Housing Authority after work is completed. The cities, towns and county governments also have contributed their own incentives to sweeten the pot.
The latest round of funding was announced inside the historic First National Bank on Northwest Front Steet in Milford. Located in the heart of the city's downtown, the building has been vacant since April 2015 when its most recent tenant, M&T Bank, consolidated its local operations to a branch on U.S. 113.
The restaurant chain Touch of Italy purchased the property last summer and is renovating the building for an April opening of its sixth location, a project backed by a $50,000 DDD grant from a pool of smaller awards not included in Tuesday's announcement. The new restaurant is expected to include sit-down seating, a bar in the former bank vault and two pizza ovens. Once finished, the eatery will employ about 30 people.
Co-owner Bob Ciprietti said the availability of the DDD grants is one of the reasons he and business partner Joe Curzi took on the new investment.
"We didn't know we were going to get the grant, but we knew we fit the criteria to qualify," co-owner Bob Ciprietti said. "It gives us some extra working capital to make the building better and invest more in our people."
Touch of Italy is one of three projects in downtown Milford to win grants this year.
Milford developer Dan Bond was awarded nearly $136,000 to support his planned renovation of the former Lou's Bootery building across the street. Founded by Louis Pikus, the store operated for 64 years but has been vacant since the death of his son, Milford City Councilman S. "Skip" Pikus in 2015.
Bond said he plans to use the DDD grant and a historic restoration grant program to fund about 40 percent of an $873,000 renovation that will allow him to sign a new tenant on the ground floor while adding a pair of two-bedroom apartments upstairs.
About a block south, a $279,000 DDD grant will be used to support a $1.5 million renovation of the former Milford Skating Center into additional office space for the engineering firm Davis, Bowen and Friedel.
Milford Mayor Bryan Shupe credited the program with helping to fill some sore spots in the ongoing redevelopment in the city's downtown business district.
"Downtown Milford has been growing for a number of years, but the challenge with a lot of downtowns is that you get six businesses move in, but two more move out," he said. "M&T Bank and Lou's Bootery were at the corner of the busiest corridor through Milford so having them both vacant at the same time was difficult, but thankfully with the DDD, we're getting projects that will bring more people downtown."
Two-thirds of the grant funding announced Tuesday was awarded to 11 projects in Wilmington. Of the nearly $2.4 million earmarked for the city, nearly a third was allocated to six projects along the Market Street corridor owned by the Buccini/Pollin Group.
Other projects in Delaware's largest city approved for DDD funding include $585,000 for a new seven-story hotel at 1300 Market St., $500,000 for an addition to the Mill co-working space in the Nemours Building on Orange Street, $396,000 for the renovation of a rental complex in the Quaker Hill neighborhood and $155,000 for the East Side Rising redevelopment project on East Seventh Street.
Projects in three other towns also were awarded funding Tuesday. Those grants include $132,000 for four affordable housing units on Dover's New Street, $195,000 for a 3,000-square-foot expansion of Connections' addiction management center in Harrington and $215,000 for the demolition and reconstruction of the Dairy Sweet building off U.S. 13 in Smyrna.
This week's DDD grant announcement is expected to be the last under Markell.
Another round of about $3.3 million in large grants will be awarded in mid-June – the remainder of the $7.9 million approved by the General Assembly for the current fiscal year.
However, it remains to be seen whether Gov.-elect John Carney will seek funding for the program in his first budget request. Lawmakers are staring down a $350 million budget gap in the coming fiscal year.
"I was a little doubtful when this legislation came before us," Senate Minority Leader Gary F. Simpson, R-Milford, said of the DDD program. "[But] from what I've seen ... I wish there was enough money in the budget to do it in every community."
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