Historic sites awarded restoration funds

[thelakelander]

Seven historic buildings in Jacksonville are poised to receive African American Cultural and Historical grant funding for their restoration.

Read More: https://www.thejaxsonmag.com/article/historic-sites-awarded-restoration-funds/

[vicupstate]

Great news all around, especially re: Stanton. Strange that Stanton got the same amount of money at Dobbs store.

[Tacachale]

This is great. Nice to see Jacksonville projects getting so much love.

[thelakelander]

Great news all around, especially re: Stanton. Strange that Stanton got the same amount of money at Dobbs store.

The entire grant amount was $30 million, to be distributed to eligible projects statewide. There were 152 applicants and around $79 million worth of requests. The maximum amount a project could be awarded without a financial match was $500,000. If a project could demonstrate a match up $250,000, then the maximum amount it could be awarded was $1 million. My guess is that this was intended to help equally distribute funding around the state. The larger projects like Stanton will have to continue to seek additional funding from other pots. In Stanton's case, the DIA would be a good place to start, considering how much money has been provided for the Trio, Ambassador, Old Federal Reserve, etc. For many of the smaller projects like Debs and some of the historic churches, it should help them advance fairly quickly.

I had the opportunity to serve on the review panel. It was a pretty humbling experience witnessing some of the smaller, long ignored rural organizations, without access to grant writers or strong connections in the preservation world, finally get some funding to preserve important places within their communities.

[Ken_FSU]

Awesome list.

Great work on this one, Ennis.

[Steve]

It looks like Stanton - with this grant - now has about $3.3M. Realistically, what's that enough to do? Could the building be structurally shored up with that so it stops further damage?

[jcjohnpaint]

Amazing!

[thelakelander]

It looks like Stanton - with this grant - now has about $3.3M. Realistically, what's that enough to do? Could the building be structurally shored up with that so it stops further damage?

I'm hoping so. The main thing needed immediately is getting a new roof on the building. There's been a lot of talk about what it could be, but none of it matters if we can't find the cash to get a roof on the building now verses later.

[thelakelander]

Awesome list.

Great work on this one, Ennis.

I was really happy to see groups like Mt. Ararat apply. This program was a once in a generation opportunity for them. They'd never get public money or have access to the resources of downtown projects, but they are of higher significance to the African American story,  cultural experience and civil rights era than many more well known sites outside of the historic communities.