An appointed board created to manage leased space in Greenwood city offices will now oversee the spending of about $450,000 in tax dollars to rehabilitate and redevelop downtown businesses.
For nearly two years, the Greenwood Redevelopment Commission has been providing grants to businesses along Main Street and Madison Avenue to encourage them to make exterior renovations.
The GROW program, for which the redevelopment commission initially set aside $500,000 in 2016 and refunded with another $500,000 at the beginning of the year, has awarded more than 20 grants for a total of nearly $550,000.
But members of the five-person redevelopment commission said managing the program is becoming too time-consuming because of how busy the board is with development projects across Greenwood. The redevelopment commission is responsible for managing property taxes collected in the city’s tax increment financing, or TIF, districts, which is supposed to be spent on economic development projects.
Instead the redevelopment commission, who are appointed by the mayor and city council, approved giving the remaining money set aside for the GROW program to the Greenwood Community Development Corp., a city-run nonprofit that was created in 2014 to manage leasing space in government buildings.
The agency is run by a three-member board, appointed by the mayor, redevelopment commission and Greenwood City Council to one-year terms.
The only responsibility the Greenwood Community Development Corp. has had is managing leases of government property, and returning the revenue to the city.
For now, the board members will be tasked with deciding whether to approve applications for the GROW program, which will be first vetted by city employees, the same process the redevelopment commission has used for awarding the grants. The redevelopment commission president will also have to approve each of the grants.
City staff will still be responsible for receiving and vetting applications, as well as following up on them to make sure the grant funds have been used appropriately, Greenwood Mayor Mark Myers said.
The city doesn’t have any plans to give further responsibilities to the board, Myers said. The three board members are not paid, and the city has no plans to change that, he said.
The GROW program has provided matching grants of up to $50,000 per property for exterior building projects that ranged from new windows to new siding. Business owners are required to provide matching funds. The goal of the program was to get repairs made to buildings on two of the city’s most visible downtown corridors and to raise the overall tax value of downtown properties.
The most recent GROW program grant, $100,000 to Planetary Brewing for an expansion and renovation project, was approved in February.
In 2008, the Franklin City Council created a similar nonprofit, the Franklin Development Corp., that is also funded with money from the city’s TIF districts. The Franklin Development Corp. was given about $5.6 million for tasks including providing low-interest loans and grants to property owners and providing financial assistance to local developers.
