Warsaw Community Development Corporation (WCDC), rebranded as Main Street Warsaw, presented a $1,887.22 facade grant to Cindy Dobbins, owner of Buffalo Street Emporium & Books, on Tuesday.
Dobbins said her store has been in business at 116 S. Buffalo St., Warsaw, since January 2010. The facade grant helped her make improvements to the front and back of the Emporium.
“We actually refinished the front of the building. We put up a little window sign. We’ve also done some tuckpointing of the brick in the back. We had some areas where the brick was getting very cracked and so forth in between, so we had that tuckpointed,” she explained. “We had a section of our back railing removed that was rickety. We still have some work to do on that, but we did get some of that work done, at least to where it’s safe and everything back there.”
Dobbins said they did a little over $3,600 in improvements to the outside of the building. The facade grant reimburses half of that.
As a member of the Main Street Warsaw Board of Directors and a Warsaw Common Councilwoman, she said she recused herself from any decision on her application for the facade grant.
“The facade grants have been well used this year, and I think next year they’re going to be used a great deal, too, because we have so many new building owners downtown. It’s a good program,” Dobbins said.
Main Street Warsaw and the city of Warsaw continue to improve the downtown infrastructure and attract new businesses, according to Main Street Warsaw’s website. The introduction of a matching facade grant program in 2003 has enabled downtown building owners to make improvements to the exterior of their buildings through matching grants of up to $5,000 per merchant project each year. Since 2003, the program has resulted in over $1,472,000 in merchant investments with a city investment of over $321,400 in matching grant funds.
For information about the façade grant program, contact Main Street Warsaw at 574-267-6311, ext. 4, or email wcdc@kchamber.com.
