ABOVE: Looking north at the “Madison Neighborhood Revitalization Project” area; bordered by Madison, Williams, Logan, and Gilbert Streets (March of 2024 photo).
Back in March of 2024, it was announced that the “Madison Neighborhood Revitalization Project” would allow Danville to knock down numerous blighted homes between Madison, Williams, Logan, and Gilbert Streets. Funding was to come from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Economic Development initiative. Then, some federal red tape slowed things down.
Mayor Rickey Williams, Jr and the Danville City Council Public Works Committee.
But during Tuesday (May 13th) evening’s Danville City Council Public Works Committee meeting, Community Development Administrator Logan Cronk announced that things should be ready to go during this construction season. It would mean $850,000 to knock down 25 blighted homes, at about $20,000 each. This leaves extra funding for rehabilitation work by the city; preparing the old lots for the building of new homes.
Audio PlayerAUDIO: Whenever the federal government announced that they were going to be doing some essentially federal funding shuffling; they put us on pause, essentially. It took several months for them to kind of reopen the grant that we were initially awarded. So now we’re back on to getting a grant agreement executed and signed. But we’re ready to go on the city side.
Logan Cronk (2nd from right) gives update on the “Madison Neighborhood Revitalization Project.”
Also during Tuesday’s Public Works Committee meeting, it was forwarded to the full City Council to allow Michael and Sasha Powel to use a Midtown TIF RIP Grant for rehabilitation of a building at 14 West Woodbury. Sasha is a nurse practitioner. She plans to have the building rehabbed for she and other medical or social support services to establish offices, in addition to a new version of something at Danville Area Community College that she would like to try there.
Audio PlayerAUDIO: Myself and Dr. Jonathon Wade run a Connection Cafe at DACC. It’s a mobile coffee cart that was created to kind of regenerate social connection after COVID. And so we wanted to recreate a stationary Connection Cafe within our building.
A look at the Bresee Tower tear down progress as of 3 PM on Tuesday, May 13th.
Prior to the start of the meeting, Director of Public Works Dave Ruwe stated that things continue to go as planned for Homrich’s tear down of Bresee Tower. He says there is no estimate of when the project will be concluded, but that the contract does call for workers to perhaps be on the site through Labor Day.
ORIGINAL “MADISON NEIGHBORHOOD REVITALIZATION PROJECT” STORY: https://vermilioncountyfirst.com/2024/03/08/pending-senate-approval-presidents-signature-federal-funding-for-madison-neighborhood-project-is-on-its-way/
