Altavista scores $1 million grant for downtown

By Sarah Watson

Published: January 14, 2009

Altavista has a new redevelopment grant to add to its pot of gold. Officials were told Monday the town will receive a $1 million Community Development Block Grant to go toward renovating downtown storefronts and streetscapes.

The town, through Altavista On Track and Region 2000, applied for the grant the last two years, but wasn’t successful. One of 2008 awards went to Brookneal for the same amount and for similar work.

“The (application) we submitted in March 2008, that was really the best application we could do because all those things work together at one time,” said Region 2000 development specialist Scott Smith.

But at the end of 2008, there was enough money left over from the cycle for organizers to redistribute to other applicants and Altavista was at the top of the list, Smith said.

“(It was) one of those things where you didn’t make it in the first round, but you made it at the second round,” said town manager Waverly Coggsdale.

In addition to helping pay for storefront renovations and streetscape improvements, Smith said the grant money also will go to helping develop housing in the upper stories of downtown buildings and improving a small park.

“The town of Altavista really ponied up,” Smith said. “The private owners increased their matches, the town increased their match by funding façade improvement work and the town received additional transportation grant money, which made the projects look more feasible.”

Creating housing in the downtown district will help building owners make money “and creates more of an after-hours presence downtown, so it makes downtown more alive,” Smith said.

Town council, which was notified of the award Tuesday, is “very happy, very pleased” about the grant, Coggsdale said. “We think this will mesh well and will assist those and other initiatives that are more locally driven, such as a building im-provement program.”

The CDBG grant comes about 18 months after Altavista was designated as a Main Street Community, a program that gives state-funded resources to help communities revitalize downtown business districts.

The new grant money also will make it easier for local property owners to pay for building improvements, Smith said. The town currently has $100,000 of its own money in a matching grant pot, but business owners had to contribute 50 per-cent of the cost. However, the new CDBG grant will allow property owners to get the same amount by only adding 25 per-cent of the cost, he said.

“That money is going to go a long ways,” Smith said. “It’s going to be pretty cool.”