By: Deborah Johnson Wood
It's been nearly five years in the making, and last week the Grand Rapids City Commission voted unanimously to designate the Uptown area as the city's first Corridor Improvement District (CID).
The
designation will allow Uptown -- consisting of the Eastown, East Hills,
East Fulton and Wealthy Street business districts and their surrounding
neighborhoods – to leverage what could be millions of dollars in tax
increment financing and other funding for streetscaping and
infrastructure, marketing, building enhancements and business
recruitment.
"What has to happen now is the creation
of a corridor improvement authority board," says Kimberly Van Dyk,
executive director of Neighborhood Ventures.
The organization was a driving force behind the CID development. "The
city commission will appoint Uptown stakeholders to be on the board,
and the board's first task will be to write the development plan and
the increment financing plan for the district."
Those plans must survive a process
involving a public hearings and a resolution to adopt, and then must be
filed with the city and the state before Uptown can collect any tax
increment financing or other funding, or undertake any CID-related
improvements.
"I think the Uptown CID is going to be
a model CID for the state of Michigan," Van Dyk adds. "I believe that
because, first of all, the area has a really good base of forward
momentum but yet there's still a lot of room for improvement. Secondly
the group of volunteers has been the most impressive group of
volunteers I've ever worked with and I know they're going to work hard
to make it the best it can be."
To read the Uptown CID Proposal, click here.
Source: Kimberly Van Dyk, Neighborhood Ventures
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Deborah Johnson Wood is development news editor for Rapid Growth Media. She can be contacted at [email protected].
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