Main Street in downtown Kendallville is pictured looking north from the west side of the block near William Street. Twenty-five downtown buildings have been entered for consideration in the city’s $2 million PreservINg Main Street grant. KPC Media photo by Patrick Redmond

By Steve Garbacz
Sun-News

KENDALLVILLE — A dozen? Psssh. Make it two dozen, plus one.

Downtown building owners entered a total of 25 buildings into consideration for funding through Kendallville’s $2 million PreservINg Main Street.

That final count smashed expectations that city officials had just made a few weeks ago, when they had 10 applications in and said they anticipated having about a dozen by the Jan. 3 deadline.

What actually happened was a flood of last-minute signups that has taken city leaders from wondering if they’d had enough work to fill out the $2 million budget to now perhaps having to cut a few buildings out because the money might not be enough to cover everyone.

On Wednesday, a steering committee of local officials met to go through a scoring process on each application to set up a priority list that will help determine which buildings get a piece of the $2 million grant and which might have to be sidelined for now.

“I think this is fantastic news, and in fact, we’re zooming today to go through and rank these applications on who has their funding lined up, what they’re planning to do to their building,” Mayor Suzanne Handshoe said Thursday morning. “I was pleased with the 12 or 13. Now, this is really great news.”

Kendallville’s downtown has just over 60 buildings, so getting 25 of them involved in the grant represents almost half of the downtown inventory.

Kendallville was one of 25 communities to apply for the new pilot program from the Indiana Office of Community and Rural Affairs and then was selected as one of five finalists for consideration. The state had originally said only a sole community would be funded but then ended up selecting two to get the $2 million grant, with Kendallville and Brookville getting the awards.

Two weeks ago, city leaders predicted they’d have about a dozen buildings submitted for the project, which raised questions about whether the city might have money left over and, if so, would they be able to keep it and utilize it in a second round of projects?

But the final application flurry blew those initial expectations away and now it’s unclear whether there will be enough grant money to share with everyone who wants some.

The grant provides up to 85% of the cost of facade work, with a specific focus on historic preservation and restoration. Building owners are being required to chip in a 15% match, which is significantly lower buy-in than the 50/50 matching grants the Kendallville Redevelopment Commission regularly offers for facade work.

One other huge difference between the PreservINg Main Street grant program and the city’s usual facade grants is that the RDC’s program is capped at 50% of the cost up to $15,000, so building owners with very expensive projects can only get a maximum of $15,000.

The city’s $2 million grant does not have a cap on project cost, so building owners can potentially get major renovation at the 85/15 split, as long as the project gets greenlit as part of the overall construction package.

Kristen Johnson, the outgoing Kendallville Area Chamber of Commerce executive director who became the city’s first full-time Main Street manager starting Jan. 10, said the grant’s steering committee will be scoring the applications and setting up a priority list.

The scoring matrix the city is using has seven categories — project oversight, community and public support, building use, private sector support, case statement/need, overall impact and discretionary — that will determine a ranking for projects.

Once the city gets its rankings set, the next steps in the process would be to start connecting building owners with the architecture firm MartinRiley of Fort Wayne to begin drafting designs and estimating costs, Johnson said.

Those cost estimates will be an integral part of figuring out how many buildings the city can reasonably afford with its $2 million.

This article was made available through Hoosier State Press Association.