Community Grant Forum

The Sackets Harbor Heritage Area Advisory Committee will hold a Community Grant Forum on Wednesday, Sept 24, at 6:30 pm, at the Visitor Center, to discuss potential projects to put forward for grant funding from New York State.

The Village is beginning the process of putting together applications for funding through one (or both) of two New York State grant programs — the Downtown Revitalization Initiative (DRI), which awards one $10 million grant to the North Country per year, and the New York Forward program, which awards two $4.5 million grants to the North Country per year.

In both programs, the purpose of the grants is to fund projects that will transform local business districts. Businesses, non-profit organizations, and municipalities are all eligible to submit projects as part of the Village’s application. The funding works as follows:

• 75% of project costs are reimbursable for businesses (this is higher than in previous years),
• 100% of project costs are reimbursable for non-profits, and
• 100% of project costs are reimbursable for municipalities.

It’s essential to have strong project proposals in each category to make the Sackets Harbor application competitive, as our application will be judged on its overall merits and balance. Our village potentially has two separate business districts for which we can submit: West Main Street and Madison Barracks. The business district selected for submission will be determined by which has the greater number of transformative project proposals.

For the application process, the project proposals can be quite simple. The only information needed is a brief description of a project, its timeline/status, and its projected costs. We’ll be discussing these in greater detail during the Community Forum.