LE MARS, Iowa (AP) - The owners of 30 downtown buildings in Le Mars hope to breathe life back into the storefronts in the spirit of historic preservation.
The city has qualified for a $500,000 federally financed Community Development Block Grant, which will be used to make improvements to the buildings’ facades to bring them in line with the historic look of the downtown district.
The Sioux City Journal reports (https://bit.ly/1k5ezNu ) the grant will be matched evenly by the city and the building owners for a total of $1 million.
Linda Mayrose, a real estate broker associate with Property Pros and a property owner on Central Avenue, said she has been considering revamping her building’s dated storefront for about a decade.
Mayrose is a member of the design committee that helped identify the sites for restoration. She’s also a member of the Le Mars Historic Preservation Commission, which played a role in defining the city’s grant application.
“I have a vested interest in restoring our downtown,” she said.
Mayrose said she’ll use whatever funds she receives to remove old tin from her storefront, replace boarded-up windows and possibly restore the awning. Only specific exterior improvements, such as tuckpointing, that give the building a more historical look, are allowed. But that’s fine with Mayrose.
“For me, to do it any differently than how it was has never been an option,” she said.
Building owners have already met with city officials and representatives from the Franks Design Group, of Glenwood, Iowa, to discuss what kind of improvements can be made under the grant.
A prerequisite for the grant was that all properties must be in a “slum and blight” district, said Pete Franks, the design firm’s president.
“It’s not really slum and it’s not really blight, but these are buildings that could use some help that have declined from their original appearance,” he said.
Other federal restrictions under the grant mean owners must meet prevailing federal wage requirements for any work done on the project and must have any interior work approved by the state of Iowa.
“These take a lot of work and patience and tolerance, but at the end of the day you get a downtown district and a set of buildings updated way beyond anything the building owners would have been able to do,” said Franks, whose firm is finishing a similar project in Manning, Iowa.
Preliminary work on some of the buildings is expected to start in late summer or early fall, with completion expected sometime in 2015.
Terry Claussen, owner of Claussen’s Menswear, is hoping for repairs to some of the shop’s windows as well as the replacement of decorative tile on the building’s exterior.
“Hopefully by the end of next summer, most of the projects will be completed,” he said.
Le Mars City Administrator Scott Langel said the grant is a blessing because city funds have allowed for only piecemeal improvements in the past.
“It was slow to get buildings done because the funds could only do two or three properties per year,” he said.
Before applying for the CDBG funding last year, he said city staff approached the downtown business owners to see if they were interested in taking part. Approximately 40 business initially signed letters of intent, Langel said. That number since has dropped to about 30.
Business owners must pay their portion of the cost up front, with local-option sales tax funds used to pay for the city’s $250,000 portion of the cost.
Once the final scope of the work has been identified, the city will solicit bids for the project, Langel said. And he’s hopeful for tangible results.
“I really do think by having a more integrated look downtown where it all is historic in nature, it’s going to really promote people coming down for business,” he said. “I think it will attract more customers.”
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Information from: Sioux City Journal, https://www.siouxcityjournal.com
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