The village of Newark is going to have a Merry $10 million dollar Christmas.
Governor Kathy Hochul announced this week the village was among the winners in Round 5 of the Downtown Revitalization Initiative grant program. From the Governor’s news release:
Downtown Newark is a compact, walkable, well-defined, and concentrated area that the village aims to make the heartbeat of a lively, world-class village and the cultural and commercial center of the Finger Lakes region with the Erie Canal serving as the village’s center of commerce. With multiple, large anchor institutions and ongoing job growth, Newark has seen nearly $220 million invested in the village in the last 10 years. A robust public engagement process led the village to identify needs for infill mixed-use development, more housing for workforce and seniors, and new space for indoor recreation and wellness with a focus on utilizing space along the Erie Canal.
The Finger Lakes Regional Economic Development Council conducted a thorough and competitive review process of proposals submitted from communities throughout the region and considered all seven criteria below before recommending Rochester and Newark as the nominees:
- The downtown should be compact, with well-defined boundaries;
- The downtown is able to capitalize on prior or catalyze future private and public investment in the neighborhood and its surrounding areas;
- There should be recent or impending job growth within, or in close proximity to the downtown that can attract workers to the downtown, support redevelopment and make growth sustainable;
- The downtown must be an attractive and livable community for diverse populations of all ages, income, gender, identity, ability, mobility and cultural background;
- The municipality should already embrace or have the ability to create and implement policies that increase livability and quality of life, including the use of local land banks, modern zoning codes and parking standards, complete streets plans, energy efficient projects, green jobs, and transit-oriented development;
- The municipality should have conducted an open and robust community engagement process resulting in a vision for downtown revitalization and a preliminary list of projects and initiatives that may be included in a DRI strategic investment plan;
- The municipality has the local capacity to manage the DRI process; and
- The municipality has identified transformative projects that will be ready for near-term implementation with an infusion of DRI funds
- Rochester and Newark now join the Cities of Geneva, Batavia, Penn Yan and Seneca Falls, which were the Finger Lakes Region’s winners in the first four DRI rounds, respectively.
Mayor Jonathan Taylor and Brian Stratton, NYS Canal Board
Assemblyman Brian Manktelow, Mayor Jonathan Taylor, State Senator Pam Helming
Village Board: Emily Howard, Stu Blodgett,
Mayor Jonathan Taylor, Bob Bendix,
Chris Burgess
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