Funding sought for downtown work

Voters will be asked at town meeting to approve a downtown revitalization fund, and then $100,000 in seed money for downtown projects.

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Funding sought for downtown work Rutland Herald | March 02, 2017 By SUSAN SMALLHEER STAFF WRITER The old Visiting Nurse Building at 5-7 Main Street in Springfield could be demolished to open up views and access to the Black River under the Springfield Streetscape Master Plan. The demolition would expand the Comtu Cascades Park, foreground. SUSAN SMALLHEER / STAFF FILE PHOTO The old Visiting Nurse Building at 5-7 Main Street in Springfield could be demolished to open up views and access to the Black River under the Springfield Streetscape Master Plan. The demolition would expand the Comtu Cascades Park, foreground. SUSAN SMALLHEER / STAFF FILE PHOTO SPRINGFIELD — Voters will be asked at town meeting to approve a downtown revitalization fund, and then $100,000 in seed money for downtown projects. Town Manager Tom Yennerell said Tuesday that creation of the fund and the funding article werekeytokeeping up the momentum in attacking blight and revitalizing the downtown area. In a joint inter view Tuesday with Select Board Chairman Kristi Morris, the two town leaders said the fund and the money were needed to continue the town’s plan for two Main Street buildings the town recently purchased from Christopher Mason: the old Visiting Nurses Association building and the former Springfield Bakery building. The two issues are Articles 8 and 9 on the Springfield town warning that voters will be asked to approve Tuesday. Yennerell said that the town needed some planning money to demolish the VNA building, and to figure out what to do with the bakery building. He said the town’s original plan to tear down the bakery building was not realistic, given that it’s located in the town’s historic downtown district. Yennerell said while the VNA building was as well, it doesn’t play as much of a key role in the downtown historic landscape. He said state historic preservation officials viewed both buildings and gave preliminary approval for tearing down the VNA building, which is on the bank of the Black River. It appears that building, Yennerell said, isn’t as important to the fabric of the historic district. The town’s streetscapes project calls for the expansion of the Comtu Cascades park and to open up the view to the river. At that particular location, there is a long cascading waterfall. The fund would also provide seed money to receive grants for various downtown projects, and could also be used to fund engineering and construction plans, he said. One of the first projects the town was to undertake is removing some of the overgrown downtown shrubs, Yennerell said. The town crew could remove the shrubs, he said, but a landscaping crew would probably be needed to install new shrubs, he said. Yennerell said members of the Park-Union Neighborhood Association had created a flier and had been handing them out in town, specifically at the Springfield Recycling Center. The cost of the fund is 15 cents per $1,000 of assessed property valuation, or $15 per $100,000 of assessed value. Yennerell said one of the easier projects recommended by the Streetscapes study included adding some trees and “bump-outs” at pedestrian crossings on Main Street. Only a few trees would make a tremendous difference in making Main Street in the downtown area more attractive, he said.