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Serving Northern St. Louis County, Minnesota

DEED program to provide grants for Tower, Ely business improvements

Jodi Summit
Posted 8/24/22

REGIONAL - The Northland Foundation and The Northspan Group hosted a presentation earlier this month at the Tower Civic Center to share updates and gather feedback about the Minnesota DEED Main …

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DEED program to provide grants for Tower, Ely business improvements

Posted

REGIONAL - The Northland Foundation and The Northspan Group hosted a presentation earlier this month at the Tower Civic Center to share updates and gather feedback about the Minnesota DEED Main Street Revitalization Program.
This program will infuse $1.1 million in grant dollars into commercial/business projects in both Ely and Tower, as well as provide additional resources under a loan program.
The program is targeted at commercial properties in the Highway 169 corridor between Tower and Ely, and will target funding to projects that rehabilitate blighted properties, create additional housing, add or improve retail spaces, provide additional vacation and rental property, create more commercial office space for lease, include environmental and efficiency improvements, address code compliance issues, and enhance green spaces.
About 50 Tower-area business owners attended a meeting on this program last spring, which was used to gauge interest in the program and get a rough idea of how businesses would use it. At that time program details and whether or not the funding would actually be available were unknown. Businesses that expressed interest last March will need to submit a formal application in September.
Applications will open on Sept. 1 and will be accepted through the end of September. In October, Northland and Northspan will notify applicants on their decision to approve a project, put it on a waitlist, or deny a project. Awards will be sent to business owners in October.
The grant will be for 30 percent of total project cost. Total project cost can include items from July 1, 2021 and forward; however, only 50 percent of project costs from July 1, 2021 through Sept. 1, 2022 may be counted. 100-percent of project costs from Sept. 1 through 2023 count towards the total project cost. Loan terms for the program will be included in the application documents. The loan can be used to cover the remaining 70 percent of the project not covered by the grant, or for other purposes as well.
The Tower/Ely application will be scored on three points: physical improvements to commercial buildings, affordable housing units created, and number of quality jobs created.
The Northland Foundation / Northspan Group will provide a virtual Q&A session and a tutorial on how to fill out the grant and loan application once it is available.
For more information on the program and how to get a copy of the application once it is available, contact:
Amanda Vuiccich - avuicich@northspan.org
Zack Filipovich - zfilipovich@northspan.org
Tony Sertich - tony@northlandfdn.org.