MIDDLETOWN—Representatives from Middletown, Port Jervis, and the Village of Goshen said after a May 9 information session on a $10 million state grant for revitalizing downtowns, they will all be applying.
The grant totals $100 million but will be split up between the state’s 10 Regional Economic Development Councils (REDC), which will be in charge of selecting one municipality from its region. Orange County falls into the Mid-Hudson region, which includes Dutchess, Putnam, Rockland, Sullivan, Ulster, and Westchester counties.
This is the first year the state has done this Downtown Revitalization Initiative (DRI), which is meant to “transform long-forgotten areas into dynamic neighborhoods where tomorrow’s workforce will want to live, work, and raise a family,” the governor’s press release says.
The 8-page application asks municipalities to define a boundary, which could be a neighborhood, a district, or an entire downtown, and demonstrate that it has attractive features, potential for job growth, and would serve a “sizeable,” diverse population within “easy reach” of the area.
Municipalities can submit as many areas as they want, provided they have a well-defined boundary, and can even combine more than one municipality in an application if the defined region crosses borders.
Middletown Mayor Joseph DeStefano said they had identified the downtown Business Improvement District (BID) and the former state psychiatric center site as targets for their application. “Or in some way combining the two, which will be linked by the Heritage Trail,” he said, referring to plans to extend the Heritage Trail from Goshen to Middletown.
Some of the criteria the REDC is looking at in a strong application, said Megan Taylor, executive director of the Mid-Hudson REDC, is private and public investment that the state grant can leverage.
DeStefano pointed to two breweries, one that opened last fall and another one that is set to open this summer, as well as an indoor/outdoor soccer complex, and Fei Tian school as examples of private investment already happening in the city. He said there are more businesses looking for light industrial space as well.
