The Danville City Council has agreed to seek two state and federal grants in hopes they will help develop large sites for future development. Bill Pickett has the story….
Danville Community Development Administrator Logan Cronk says one of the sites is along East Voorhees Street where Heatcraft and the Quaker Oats plants were previously located…
{AUDIO: “With the loss of the Quaker structure and the jobs, the city has to come up with creative ideas to attract other manufacturing or employers to the area, and there’s a shortage of large acreage properties that are ‘shovel-ready’. This property, obviously, has all the infrastructure, but there’s one main issue – there’s a flood plain running right through the middle of it. So, the idea behind this grant is to obviously help us off-set the cost – 80-percent of the cost – to remediate that flood plain so we can have a large shovel-ready site.”}
(Cronk is third from left in photo.)
The city is requesting up to $5-million dollars from the U. S. Economic Development Administration to help prepare that site. The City Council also voted to seek up to $1-million, 750-thousand dollars from the State of Illinois to assist in extending sanitary/sewer infrastructure to a site near the Vermilion Regional Airport. It is land located on the north side of West Newell Road just west of Bowman…
{AUDIO: “Phase one and phase two design had been completed for that already, so there has been dollars invested. And, as I keep talking about is – we’re short on large sites. And this is a site that has all the infrastructure to it – minus the sewer line. And what timing for right after this to have it designed already to apply for a grant to extend the line 80-20 percent match.”}
The City is committing up to $350-thousand dollars in matching funds for the site at Newell and Bowman Roads, and $1-million dollars in local matching funds for the Voorhees Street site. Cronk was asked what he thinks the City’s chances are to win the grants…
{AUDIO: “ We’re pretty optimistic. We’ve been working with the governor’s office closely when we did lose Quaker and working with the governor’s office to try to keep Hyster. So, when we lost both of them – they can’t make any guarantees – but I believe the State of Illinois is willing to assist the city recover in anyway they can.”}
The City Council approved both applications unanimously during Tuesday evening’s meeting.
