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While the city of Muncie is constantly finding ways to improve its image, it continues to explore and initiate programs with Muncie's future in mind. Recently, the Muncie city administration has been working together with members of the Muncie Redevelopment Commission and the streetscape commission to renovate downtown Muncie with a $1 million facade restoration and the addition of bike lanes.
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Bruce Baldwin, the director of business development for Muncie and Delaware County, said the facade program is still in the development stages but there are ongoing talks with three banks interested in granting loans for the project.
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The redevelopment commission is meeting on Sept. 6 to review proposals and possibly enter loan arrangements with a local lender to finance it, Baldwin said.
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"Basically, the program and these guidelines have yet to be finalized but the preprogram would be to loan to downtown property owners up to 70 percent of their project and then they would have to come up with 30 percent to make the full project work, and they must own the property or own the building at least five years after the project is complete and if they do that, the loan can be forgivable," he said. "It will cost them 30 percent of their total expenses to improve the facade of their buildings."
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The facade restoration is not the first in downtown Muncie's history. Baldwin said there was a previous project that took place almost 10 years ago and will be paid off in July.
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"We had a [$1.5 million] in facade restorations, and there were a number of downtown buildings that took advantage of the program and that was through the community development block grant using federal dollars," he said.
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Hopes are high that the project will beautify the outer structures downtown and attract businesses to invest in Muncie. Vicki Veach, executive director of the Delaware County Redevelopment Commission, said both the addition of new bike lanes and a facade restoration will benefit the city and keep it on track with the original downtown master plan that started in the 1980s.
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"This is a good thing because it improves the central core of the city and allows now for us to generate another grouping of private investment in the city so in the long run, the improvement [will] then cause additional tax revenues to be generated," Veach said. "They're pretty much on track with that master plan and every year, it gets improved and every year, we continue to add different things to attract people to Muncie."
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Mayor Dennis Tyler and his administration have been working with the various redevelopment commissions that span from all corners of the city. Tyler said he is extremely excited about the conversations and progress that have taken place so far to revitalize Muncie and make the new structures and facilities meet the American with Disabilities Act standards as part of the streetscape program.
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"In this plan was also a project between the city of Muncie and MITS and Delaware County metropolitan commission receiving $350,000 in federal funds to construct, repair and upgrade sidewalks in the downtown district and the Village, and that's part of the priority in the city's ADA commission plan," Tyler said. "The more attractive with facades and the more pedestrian friendly you can make your downtowns and village areas, the more attractive they're going to be to development."
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There will also be new developments announced to keep working on the master plan, Tyler said.
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"We're preparing to bring forward in the next few weeks ideas for our visions of those three blocks in that downtown area I think are going to be critical to increased investment down there," he said. "We've got another meeting Friday afternoon and we ought to have a better idea when we'll be ready to have a public meeting to discuss some of these other options for the downtown area."
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While many at the administrative level are excited and optimistic about the facade program and new bike lanes, current business owners may still have some hesitation to the level of success anticipated.
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Brandon Mundell, the owner of Toys Forever, Models and Hobbies in downtown Muncie, said he's not sure if the investments made for the facade restoration will help business or not.
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"It might, if we can get more businesses into the buildings as they are redone right now," Mundell said. "We do have empty spaces right now in buildings that are already redone, so I'm not sure actually if it's a good business generator on its own but it's something we need to do in terms of historic preservation."
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Mundell is part of the historic preservation commission and said the building he operates out of now is a recipient of the original facade grant. Even though he is aware of the importance of the upkeep of the older structures downtown, he said there are other things to consider when investing that kind of money.
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"Sometimes, I think the asking prices on leases are outside what the actual market supports but we have business owners that aren't feeling that way so they leave their spots empty," he said. "We don't have a lack of beautiful buildings, we have a lack of traffic keeping businesses open and the only way we can really do that is, I think, get a core mass of businesses that are in our few blocks here that people want to come to, that they want to spend say a whole Saturday shopping."
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The next stage of the facade restoration program will be discussed in a few weeks and based off the investment made during the first restoration, Veach said, things look optimistic, thanks to those investors.
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"We're very fortunate to have people who understand that this basically, the core of the community, is like a hub of a wheel and the stronger the center core is, the better the spokes are going to be," she said.
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