Thanks to Main Street Grants, Downtown Gloversville Is Getting a Facelift
business, downtown, downtown gloversville, main street grants, revitalize, the fulton county regional chamber of commerce & industry, wally hart,
With a new source of financing and strong interest from merchants and property owners, downtown Gloversville is about to get a face-lift.
The Fulton County Regional Chamber of Commerce & Industry has received two $200,000 Main Street grants, funds that are to be used to renovate and upgrade buildings in the city’s core. One will be used on South Main, the other on North Main, and when it’s all said and done, the city’s business district will sport a clean, inviting look.
“We’ve got five applicants on South Main Street, and they are planning varying degrees of work,” says Wally Hart, the chamber’s president. “All five will be doing façade renovations, and some of them plan major building renovation. A couple of the applicants will be doing residential renovations as well, creating living spaces in the downtown area.”
While many downtown property owners have already invested heavily in improving their buildings, Hart says the new funds will make it possible to get more work done immediately, as well as increasing interest in improving the downtown area.
“The grants require that building owners match the funds at least 50-50, and the projects being done mean that this money is only the tip of what’s going to be spent,” he says.
“It’s encouraging some investment here, and that’s what we hoped would happen. We’re really thinking of the grants as seed money, and think we’ll exceed $1 million overall in improvement investments.”
A big chunk of that is being spent by Susan Casey, who opened Beacon Wearhouse in December 1998 and owns several other properties downtown. Casey, who has fully rehabbed one building to include both residential and retail space, says the added funds will move along several projects.
“There’s only so much you can put out of pocket, and if they can parallel some of the money I’m putting in, it will really help me out,” she says. “With one of the buildings I have, the intention is to create some middle-income housing, and the grant will go to renovate that building’s storefront. We’ve got a picture of the original building, and want to make something that’s much nicer than what’s there now.”
The plans are equally ambitious over at Buck’s Pizza, where owner Mary Jo Faville hopes to update the property she’s been in for 11 years.
“I hope to improve the outside,” Faville says. “We want to get back to the original look, but we’ve had trouble finding a picture. The majority of our work is going to be on the façade, and I’ve got a second floor to the building that needs some renovations. It really depends on how much we get.”
This kind of large-scale planning and excitement is exactly what these grants are designed to do, Hart says, and can only mean good things for downtown.
“The owners want to do these projects, and their work will encourage other people to start thinking about what they could do as well,” he says. “Just the encouragement of this kind of money being available is an incentive for people to start thinking, so it’s already succeeded.”
The early success of the effort is also a validation for the chamber, which wanted to help jump-start development in Gloversville, then replicate the process elsewhere in the county.
“We were asked to focus on Gloversville because they’ve suffered the most in terms of population decline, but we’re a regional chamber and want to step up to the plate everywhere,” Hart says. “We needed to put some extra effort into Gloversville now, but we’re ready to work with any community that needs us to help. We look forward to this project being a success, and if we can do it elsewhere, we certainly will.”
Story by Joe Morris
Photo by Wes Aldridge
