There may be grant funding available to help spruce up the downtown, city councillors will hear during their meeting Monday.
A report going to council includes a suggestion that the city apply to the Northern Development Initiative Trust’s Main Street Revitalization program, which could help pay for physical improvements like lighting, streetscape updates and more.
“The program supports projects with 70 per cent of eligible costs up to $200,000 per application up to a lifetime maximum of $500,000 per community,” states the report to council. “The City would need to be the lead applicant, but a partnership with relevant groups could help with project implementation and sourcing the 30 per cent seed funding required to access the grant.”
The report goes on to say that there have been discussions between the partner organizations about how to use any funding from the program, adding it would be up to the partners and relevant city departments to finalize any plans.
Councillors first heard about this new push to improve downtown in February, at which time they asked for an update in six months. That update comes Monday.
“The Downtown Strategy’s recommended first step of establishing an implementation team has been completed with Downtown Prince George as the lead and the City, Tourism Prince George, and the Chamber of Commerce as team members,” states the report. “The first step was the formation of a strategy implementation team, with a goal to lay out the “framework and principles that will help move the community’s downtown towards its vision of being a destination and gathering place of business and culture, while recognizing the challenges facing that vision."
In the report, Downtown Prince George lists beautification projects (lighting flowers), micro-grants, downtown clean and safe programs, Saturday markets, Summerfest, Winterfest and Fallfest as some of its improvement initiatives.
Tourism Prince George notes events like the Container Market, PG’s Ale Trail, Bites, Flights + Sights and its Visitor Information Centre as successes.
The Chamber has its Support PG initiative, and the City of Prince George offers several approaches, from its Foodie Fridays in the summer to branding and updates to its Civic Core Master Plan, Parks Master Plan and Official Community Plan.
“Another key realization of the strategy implementation team has been the scale, scope and timeline of the strategy,” states the report. “The strategy should be considered a long-term strategy with a heavy reliance on collaboration; resourcing from grants, the Team’s member organizations, and other interested groups will determine the scale and pace of initiatives due to the significant challenges and goals of the downtown vision.”
