POTSDAM — Helping to boost support and enthusiasm for the village’s May 31 application for the $10 million state grant for the state Downtown Revitalization Initiative, a public rally is planned tonight at the gazebo in Ives Park.
Village Planning and Development Director Frederick J. Hanss has been soliciting input from residents and businesses through four informational get-togethers that began on May 7 with the last one held in the community room at the Civic Center Monday night following the Village Board meeting.
“What they can expect are some pretty jazzed-up public speakers,” Mr. Hanss said about today’s rally. “That’s our last big outreach effort with the public, so we’ll have sign on letters for them to send in letters of support or if they want to write a letter of support, we can help them with that.”
The event is scheduled for 6:30 p.m. with an alternate location at the community room if the weather is inclement.
Returning to support letters, Mr. Hanss said they are important to the application process and can be from anyone and anywhere, citing letters received from businesses as far away as Madrid.
“Rating and ranking criteria number one is how much public support you have,” he said. “What those sign-on letters do and what those letters of support do is demonstrate that somebody took the time to write a letter or that someone took the time to attend an event and sign a letter.”
A major focus on that revitalization has been the village as a hub of arts, entertainment and culture as well as the first major streetscape enhancement in about 40 years.
“We’re really making an effort to make sure that the community is behind the project. They are very enthusiastic about the streetscape enhancement. The really want to see downtown Potsdam go through a revitalization program,” Mr. Hanss said. “Last time Potsdam did a big streetscape project would have been in the late 1970s, so 40 years ago.”
The enhancement would be along the Market Street National Historic Register District, which goes from Depot Street over to the intersection with Maple, Main and Market, and then down Raymond Street.
Within that district there are 28 buildings that are listed on the National Register of Historic Places, Mr. Hanss said.
The funding would go toward replacing the existing sidewalks that are there with one that has a decorative concrete band on it, put in new street trees and “bio-tree planters” which act as stormwater management infrastructure.
“What that does is it captures stormwater running off of the street and the sidewalk and it very slowly filters it through soil and it releases it to the water cleaner,”Mr. Hanss said. “All of this directly feeds into the Raquette, so if we can deliver it cleaner and cooler, that is a good thing.”
There would also be new LED street lighting along Market and Raymond streets to better illuminate the sidewalks and for senior citizens and people with disabilities, groups Mr. Hanss said he has heard from.
“That could be a hazard and it keeps them from coming downtown,” Mr. Hanss said. “It’s the same model lighting that we have in Ives Park and on the Maple Street bridges, so it will all be a nice, consistent look.”
But one of the big feathers Mr. Hanss said is now in the village’s cap is the recent announcement that the state is funding $5.6 million toward a $26 million renovation project of Clarkson University’s Old Snell Hall into 59 affordable housing apartments by The Vecino Group is a feather in the cap of the village.
A common denominator among each of the previous recipients of the grant money was that each had a theater in the downtown.
Old Snell also houses a theater on its first floor, will be part of the renovation and will be occupied by the Arts Council and Shipley Center for Renovation.
“As part of the project, it will renovate the theater in Old Snell that has been closed to the public for many years,” Mr. Hanss said. “It’s about 98,000 square feet in size and seats about 500 people. It used to be the Crane School of Music’s performing arts space.”
He said having the North County Children’s Museum on the western edge of the focus area and Old Snell Hall on the eastern edge makes for a couple of big cultural anchors downtown.
“So this is our year,” he said.
Anyone interested in writing a letter of support is being asked to address it to Mayor Reinhold J. Tischler and email it to fhanss@vi.potsdam.ny.us or mail it to Planning and Development Office, P.O. Box 5168, Potsdam, NY 13676.