An aerial view of the Statehouse in Trenton
By Joshua Burd
The state Economic Development Authority is now accepting applications for a grant program aimed at helping communities revitalize underutilized retail or office properties.
The agency, under what’s known as the 21st Century Redevelopment Program, will make grants of up to $50,000 to help local governments and agencies redevelop, repurpose or re-green commercial properties that have become outdated or outmoded due to changing demographics. The EDA had put the program on hold last spring due to the COVID-19 crisis, but recently relaunched the initiative with updated parameters.
Municipalities, counties, and redevelopment agencies have 45 days to apply. Potential uses of the grant funding include, but are not limited to:
- Legal analysis to explore designating one or more relevant properties in the community as an “area in need of redevelopment”
- Stakeholder engagement and facilitation to identify community desires and needs
- Identification of appropriate funding sources to support community led reuse of one or more properties
- Cataloging relevant retail and office properties in a community and identifying priority sites when considering community needs
- Economic analysis relating to the feasibility of various redevelopment and/or reuse scenarios.
- Land-use planning identifying the most suitable reuse scenarios
Created in October 2018, the program aims to help properties including suburban office parks and shopping malls that had become a drain on their host communities, as professional and residential populations shifted to downtowns and urban settings. Those towns were left to maintain the infrastructure and roads around the buildings without the resources to do so.
In response to stakeholder feedback, the EDA adjusted the eligibility criteria for the program in 2019 to make more properties eligible while ensuring that assets of significant scope and scale remain prioritized, according to a news release. But to accommodate the significant business disruptions resulting from the pandemic and work-from-home directives, the agency put the program on hold in April 2020.
Once all applications are received, EDA staff will evaluate and score them competitively, with the 15 highest-scoring applications recommended to the board for grants, according to a news release. In addition to receiving funding, grant recipients will be required to participate in at least two events hosted by the authority to foster a dynamic discussion about repurposing stranded assets and provide guidance to communities facing similar challenges.
