Pure Impact

Statewide tour highlights community development projects around Michigan

Over nearly two months traveling from Marquette to Detroit, MEDC’s Community Development team has met with local officials and private developers in a timely conversation about the impact of the Michigan Community Revitalization Program and Community Block Grant Program.

The results of the PURE IMPACT tour have been impressive.

Often meeting at a recent development that symbolizes promising growth for the community, the gatherings have further the commitment to two programs that provide essential public funds that support a range of other funding, and often serves as a catalyst for the projects to become a reality.

MCRP program is available from the Michigan Strategic Fund in cooperation with the Michigan Economic Development Corporation. State officials are visiting sites of catalytic developments around the state to commemorate the five-year success of the program.

Many members of MEDC’s Community Development Team participated in the meetings, including Greg Tedder, Chief Community Development and Marketing Officer/Executive Vice President, and Katharine Czarnecki, Senior Vice President, Community Development.

Pure Impact tour visited the following cities and villages: Frankenmuth, Lansing, Bay City, Tawas City, Marquette, Detroit, Milan, Muskegon, Grand Rapids, Kalamazoo, Metamora, Flint, Saginaw, Benton Harbor, Manistee and Mason.

Locations for the meetings included the Vogue Theatre in Manistee, Bancroft Hotel in Saginaw, Flint Farmers Market, New Holland Brewery in Grand Rapids, Foundation Hotel in Detroit, Mill End Lofts in Bay City, and the apartments overlooking the outfield at Colley Law School Stadium, home of the Lansing Lugnuts.

MCRP is an incentive program designed to promote community revitalization that will accelerate private investment in the state. The program fosters redevelopment of contaminated properties, functionally obsolete or historic properties, reduces blight, protects the state’s natural resources, and contributes to Michigan’s reinvention as a vital, job generating state.

In the last five years, MCRP performance-based awards have supported 114 projects (58 completed and 56 underway). Awards of $195 million have leveraged more than $1 billion in private investment.

Meanwhile, the CDBG, a program from Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), funds local community development activities such as affordable housing, anti-poverty programs, and infrastructure development. MEDC, which is the state’s chief marketing arm for business development and attraction, administers federal funds for catalytic community development projects.

In 2016, the State of Michigan was awarded $111,447,354 in CDBG funds. Approximately $31 million was allocated to Michigan to be distributed through the Small Cities Program, which the MEDC administers on behalf of the Michigan Strategic Fund.

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