State To Provide $29M in Revitalization Grants

ALBANY-A total of 65 municipalities spread out in 35 counties will be receiving funding from New York State to help fund revitalization efforts there. "These investments will help upstate communities address the critical areas of housing, infrastructure, economic development and downtown revitalization needed to build a stronger economy," says Gov. Eliot Spitzer. The 67 grants will allow localities and developers to leverage more than $48 million in additional funding, according to state officials.

The grants were approved earlier this week by the State's Housing Trust Fund Corporation. Fund chairman Deborah VanAmerongen, who also serves as commissioner of the state's Division of Housing and Community Renewal, states that the fund received 175 applications for funding. "The Office for Small Cities had the difficult task of deciding which of the projects would have the greatest public benefit and most deserved funding," she says.

Among the projects highlighted by the governor include an initiative in Tompkins County that will receive $600,000 to provide financial assistance to 19 low-to-moderate income homeowners for the purchase of a home. The Village of Fair Haven in Cayuga County will also receive a $600,000 grant that will be used to connect 110 households to a newly developed regional wastewater treatment facility. State officials note that sub-standard on-site sewage treatment in the village is threatening Lake Ontario. The state funding will also help leverage $648,000 in additional funds, including $348,000 in grants from the US Environmental Protection Agency and $300,000 from the US Department of Agriculture.

The state also awarded a $400,000 grant to Livingston County that will allow the county to assist 66 existing businesses and establish 33 new businesses, thus creating 80 new full-time jobs and help to occupy more than 65,000 sf of downtown vacant office space, which has been hit hard in recent years by a loss of manufacturing jobs and consolidations in the agricultural industry, state officials say. The grant will allow Livingston County to leverage more than $1.1 million in additional private funds.

The City of Watertown has secured a $650,000 state grant that will help the city rehabilitate and refurbish the historic Franklin Building in the city's downtown district. While a lion's share of the project's were awarded to upstate communities, initiatives in the Kiryas Joel, Port Jervis in Orange County; New Square Village in Rockland County, Fallsburg in Sullivan County and the Village of Ellenville received a total of approximately $2 million in state funding. Ulster County was awarded five infrastructure-related state grants totaling $1.4 million.