The NDDC Expansion and Redevelopment Team spent most of the summer months working on the Downtown Revolving Loan Fund. The Team hoped to suggest changes to the EDA that would make the program more user-friendly for downtown building and business owners. The ER Team believes that if the program is more appealing and more owners access the funds, more projects will happen downtown.

Working closely with members of the EDA, the NDDC Expansion and Redevelopment Team crafted proposed changes that were well-received by the EDA. The EDA then spent some time reviewing the proposal and making some changes of their own. The result is that the program will be more appealing and, hopefully, more used by downtown building and business owners. When the final version of the program is available, the ER Team will spread the word to folks downtown and encourage them to use the program for downtown projects.

This fall, the NDDC Expansion and Redevelopment Team focused on downtown parking. Reviewing the Walker Study and the Stolley Report, the ER Team, working in partnership with the NDDC Action Squad, developed two short-term strategies to address downtown parking.

The first of these strategies is to print a hand-out that identifies the short-term parking zones in downtown. NDDC ER Team members conducted a reconaissance to inspect the adequacy of the signage in these areas and met with some downtown employers and building owners on the current situation. The hand-outs will be printed early next year and NDDC members will visit with downtown building and business owners to discuss the short-term parking zones and encourage them to have their people park in the long-term zones, leaving the short term zones open for customers.

The second of these strategies involves the creation of a low-cost, temporary parking lot on the west side of downtown to handle parking during the highway 3 work. Discussions with the City on this topic have just begun. Watch this space for future updates on this topic.