Another downtown business in Jefferson is in need of structural repair.

The City Council approved at their most recent meeting in August a $12,500 facade rehabilitation grant application for RVP~1875. City Administrator Mike Palmer says the 50/50 match grant will include tuckpointing of exterior brick and replacing some 250 bricks of the exterior. Part of the grant approval process is if the business has had a design concept done through Main Street Iowa, and typically the business will follow parts or all of the concept, but Palmer points out the project at RVP~1875 is different.

“At this time there’s no real plan to. There has been a concept plan done some time ago. This is strictly more just like, ‘Let’s stabilize it so you can continue on with the big picture plan.’”   

Palmer adds he is pleased with the progress of another rehabilitation project with Breadeaux Pizza on the south side of the downtown square and he says there is about $100,000 left for this fiscal year for additional projects to be done. He shares his thoughts on seeing this facade program going so well.

“(It) Certainly picked up a lot of steam. For a while the program was out there, it wasn’t utilized very much. But it’s kind of like all of a sudden a few people start doing it and can see the value, it really works. There’s not a big time limit on it (that) somebody has to do it immediately. It can stretch out a little bit, we just want to see it get done. But the response here in the last year has been phenomenal.”   

Palmer says going forward, the Council is budgeting $300,000 of tax increment financing on an annual basis for these types of projects, which he believes can cover all of the applications that have been coming in.