Funds awarded to revitalize downtown

Peekskill will receive $10 million from the state to revitalize its downtown after being named the Mid-Hudson winner of the Downtown Revitalization Initiative.

The city plans to spend as much as $300,000 of the award to develop a strategic investment plan to increase foot traffic and expand tourism, the arts, media and light manufacturing, according to the Mid-Hudson Regional Economic Development Council. Middletown, Kingston and New Rochelle have also won the Mid-Hudson award.

Behind The Story

Type: News

News: Based on facts, either observed and verified directly by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources.

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One reply on “Peekskill to Receive $10 Million Grant”

  1. Thanks very much for publishing this important article. I was actually thinking of sending you a link but wasn’t sure where exactly it would fit in. I’m glad someone saw the value and the connections to our towns.

    I had a shop in Peekskill before coming to Main Street in Cold Spring. I sat on the BID board and was very involved in the business community down there. I learned a lot about how a small city can promote, support and market its amazing downtown area and I had hoped to be able to share that knowledge here in our neck of the woods.

    Instead, what I have found out in the past 6 years, is that the Powers that Be, especially those that control the purse strings at the County, just aren’t interested. For years I have suggested to anyone who’d listen, that there’s no reason WE can’t get a piece of the action from those millions of dollars in grant money that are out there. Even before Peekskill got the $10 million, they had received many hundreds of thousands from the State and Feds for their downtown district.

    Yet there was/is not one County or Town employee, elected or appointed, who could figure out how to fill out the paperwork and push it through the appropriate agencies. In fact, judging by the recruitment effort they had for the new Tourism director (I was a candidate) it seems that the County people are pretty clueless about how much is available for us.

    By the way, I have tried to interest our own Chamber of Commerce in some of my efforts to lobby the County for money to market and promote our Cold Spring businesses. Like their colleagues in Carmel, they are not really interested. I guess they find it easier to try and extract donations and contributions from the locals than to demand that the Legislature provide us the money we are owed in lieu of sales tax.

    If nothing changes, then nothing will change. And the beat goes on……

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