By a unanimous vote, the Chelsea Downtown Development Authority approved its about $461,200 budget for FY 2015-16, which begins July 1.
The board also looked over its 2014-15 budget and was told that “the theme is, there aren’t funds beyond what is already budgeted for,” said City Manager John Hanifan.
Although there is money that hasn’t been spent yet, such as the $15,000 for Sounds and Sights, most of the money has already been earmarked in the current about $473,000 operational budget.
For the FY 15-16, $30,000 has been included for planning, streetscape and a renewal of funding for the city’s REU program, which is designed to assist downtown business owners with the cost of water and sewer connections.
Among the other funded activities are: The Sculpture Walk was allocated $12,000, $15,000 was allocated for Sounds and Sights, $12,500 for the ChelseaMich marketing efforts, $100,000 to pay for the purchase of the Palmer lot, and $2,500 was allocated for the Garden Club for flowers that are planted in the large downtown planters.
In other business, it was reported that work is progressing on the Jackson Street alley project, Hanifan said. “We are doing the electrical work now and CD Hughes has used 14 of the 30 business days (in the contract).”
He said the company has 16 business days left to finish the work, which he expects will be done by mid-May.
This project was estimated at $350,000 and included improvements to the alley off Jackson Street and to the Longworth property as well as the demolition of the Livery building.
Also planned were placing area utilities underground, and cleaning up and enhancing the alley beside the First Congregational Church.
The project, which runs from East Middle Street to Jackson Street, includes additional parking spaces.
Once that project has been completed and the invoices have come in, the DDA will have an accounting of available funding from the $450,000 bond funds and will look at erecting a decorative fence to keep people from illegally crossing the railroad tracks and installing brickpaver crosswalks in two locations.
The brick work project is estimated at $50,000-$75,000 and includes adding stamped sidewalks at two of the city’s busiest downtown intersections — Main and Middle streets and Main, Park and South streets.
Hanifan also reported on the parks and recreation open house, which he said was attended by nearly 90 people. “We had great participation from residents,” he told the DDA as the parks commission “marches toward a draft plan that will also be part of a public meeting.”
He said that the group got about 50-60 comments “all of them positive.”
In addition, he said that about 30 people were present for an economic development kick-off meeting that focused on the “concept of placemaking” and that a longer workshop will take place Saturday from 9-3 p.m. in the Council Chambers, which is open to everyone.
He told the DDA that Robert Gibbs, of nationally known Gibbs Planning Group, gave a presentation Monday and is in the process of putting together a market analysis following his field work in the city. The report is expected in about three weeks. The study received funding from a Washtenaw County grant, he said, adding that the city, along with several other municipalities, recently received another grant to do a housing market study.
“This will be another analytical tool for planning,” he said, adding, “Things are moving full on.”
Hanifan said that he, Ray Schmidt and Mark Heydlauff took a walking tour of the downtown to determine what maintenance and repairs were needed and they found several sidewalk repairs that needed to be done.
In addition, he said work is needed on the light poles downtown, many of which were are original. Hanifan said they have been painted green for a number of years and wondered if the DDA would like to change the color? In his travels, Hanifan said he’d noticed “black on poles seems to be the prevailing color.”
“Purple’s nice,” joked Guy Sanville of the Purple Rose Theatre.
The DDA canceled its scheduled work session on May 7 until there is an accounting of the money left over from the Longworth Alley project, but is expected to meet on May 21.
