City Of Spencer Pursuing Grant Application For Upper Level Study Of Some Downtown Businesses
City Of Spencer Pursuing Grant Application For Upper Level Study Of Some Downtown Businesses
January 19, 2022Steve Schwaller
(Spencer)– The city of Spencer is moving ahead with plans to apply for a grant to study 2nd floor accessibility of some buildings in the downtown area. The city’s share of the Local Governments Grant would amount to $5,000. Councilman Donovan Wunschel was among those questioning the expenditure, saying he doesn’t want to see a study done only to have it sit on a shelf possibly…
“If we’re going to do something with it, I’m all in. If we’re going to actually use this report and we get the council to buy in on actually wanting to do something with the upstairs storefronts or whatever they’re going to do, apartments, I’m all for it if we’re going to do it. But if it’s just going to be a report to have a report on our shelf somewhere then I’m not in favor it, so.”
Fellow councilman Tom Nelson feels the report will have some value regardless…
“There are people that want to see things happen with some downtown buildings, you know, the upstairs, and we know we need housing. But I would also say I’m sure this has to be considered somewhat of a baby step to that because none of this is going to happen very fast because some of these investments in some of these building tops are massive because of the fact that these buildings are dozens of years old.”
Sheriffa Jones of the city’s Historic Preservation Commission told the council one thing they would like to see identified in the study is central locations for shared elevators to more easily access the upper levels. The vote to proceed with the study was four to one with councilman Brian Balk casting the dissenting vote.
