More funds for Downtown Façade Improvement Grant Program

NEW LONDON – An additional $20,000 has been approved to be used by businesses as part of the city of New London’s Downtown Façade Improvement Grant Program.
The New London Economic Development Committee approved the additional funding when it met April 22.
At the meeting, New London City Administrator Chad Hoerth updated the committee about the city’s first round of applications for the city’s Downtown Façade Improvement Grant Program for 2025. The committee had originally approved $40,000 for the grant program.
“I’m very excited to report back to the committee that I think it’s been one of the most successful rounds that we’ve had of the program,” Hoerth said.
Over the past decade, Hoerth said the city has awarded 5-8 grants each year. In the first round of grant applications this year, Hoerth said the city had received 11 applications. He added that he has received inquiries from around five other businesses showing “significant” interest in the program, but weren’t ready to commit to the program yet.

“We were able to award 10 matching grants of $4,000 apiece, so that comes up to our budget that we talked about originally setting of $40,000,” Hoerth said.
Even though the 10 matching grants amount to $40,000, Hoerth said with the information provided by the businesses via the grant applications, the total investment by the businesses would amount to $141,000 in improvements in the downtown district.
More funds
Since there are additional businesses interested in the grants, Hoerth told the committee that he would “hate to see the momentum fade” regarding the Downtown Façade Improvement Grant Program. He said there is currently around $118,000 remaining in the city’s Economic Development Reserve fund.
“Would you guys be interested in committing some more dollars for those ones (businesses) who haven’t had the opportunity to figure out what they were going to do yet and get the quotes and fill out the paperwork?” Hoerth asked. “Would you want to infuse a little bit more money into the program this year.”
Hoerth said another $20,000 could be added to the grant program.
“I don’t want to deplete our reserve fund total, because it’s there to help with those mid-year type of things that come up that we weren’t focusing on and wasn’t expecting,” Hoerth said.
Hoerth was asked how much money the city had set aside in the past for the Downtown Façade Improvement Grant Program but didn’t allocate.
After some figuring, Hoerth said over the past four years $54,401 of the funds set aside were not used.
Ald. Tim Roberts said with the improvements made downtown, allocating more funds to the Downtown Façade Improvement Grant Program may help get more people interested in New London’s downtown.
Committee Chairperson BaLynda Croy agreed.
“I don’t want to see them (interested businesses) not do improvements this year because they’re going to wait until next year,” Croy said. “… We want to see them do it as soon as possible. And if we’re able to make a better investment in our downtown, lets go ahead and do that. That’s where I’m at.”
She added, “I think this is just incredibly exciting that we increased the dollar amount for each of the grants. Increase the total and we maxed it out. I wasn’t quite expecting us to max it out. That’s really exciting.”