The Main Street Mile 2024 Beautification Grant program is accepting applications from homeowners and nonprofits to receive grants to improve the exterior of their property. Those within the 2024 Grant District are eligible.
Growing community pride and beautifying downtown Upland to be more welcoming and engaging undergirds this component of the Main Street Mile Initiative, Andrea Masvero, executive director of 1846 Enterprises, said.
Items such as dead tree removal, house paint jobs, window replacements, roof repair, exterior lighting and parking lot striping are some of the things homeowners and nonprofits can hope to accomplish if they receive a grant, she said.
“In good economic development principles you’re making sure that (you’re) improving a town without causing harm,” Masvero said. “We want these improvements to improve the town, but preserve the housing that's there at an affordable rate.”
The size and location of the current grant district will allow for immediate impact and improvement. The hope is that other residents will be inspired by neighbors who beautify their property through the project, Masvero said.
The Initiative expects to expand those grant district boundaries in the future and intends to issue such grants to homeowners and nonprofits until 2028, she said.
Grant amounts will be based on the needs the Beautification Grant Committee sees and the level of impact they may have on the community, Masvero said.
“A lot of economic development is about making the town more attractive for visitors, for businesses, for residents,” Masvero said.
Oftentimes, homeowners or non-profits may have difficulty finding the resources to beautify their space or may face an alternative barrier, she said.
Many Upland residents do not have the additional means to update any needed or cosmetic components of their properties. The Beautification Grant program provides an opportunity for them to do so without that financial burden, Mary Fletcher, Upland clerk treasurer, said.
“(The Beautification Grant program) opens up an avenue,” Masvero said. “It’s a fairly common element of an economic-development program — to have some sort of beautification or improvement plan for certain districts.”
The effort to beautify the town was a concept previously identified in the Town of Upland’s 2015 Master Plan, Jonathan Perez, Upland town manager, said. However, over the years, other priorities overtook the hope of doing so — until now.
In 2018, the Indiana Department Of Transportation (INDOT) awarded Upland with a grant for downtown revitalization. Due to delays, the original commencement year of the grant moved from 2022 to 2024, resulting in some of the Main Street work that is taking place, Perez said.
“The additional work that the town and 1846 Enterprises has done (after receiving the Lily Grant)...(is) checking off a lot of boxes at once in a way that most communities are never afforded the opportunity or luxury or feasibility to do,” Perez said. “We’re very fortunate in that aspect of it, that all these pieces have come together in the time that they have.”
As this is the first year of the program, the Beautification Grant Committee is unsure how many applications they will grant funds to as well as how much each award may be, Masvero said.
While the October deadline for grant applications has passed, they intend to conduct two to three more rounds of grant approvals before the end of this year. The final date to submit is Dec. 16, Masvero said.
“We want to preserve the character that people love about Upland,” Masvero said. “We are not looking to make a shiny new, modern town. We want the quaint, welcoming, small town charm that really complements a sense of community that's here in Upland.”
