August 2021 | Vol. 8 Iss. 08
FREE CARRIAGE SQUARE TO RECEIVE A MILLION-DOLLAR FACELIFT, MOST OF IT FUNDED THROUGH UNCLE SAM’S CDBG WALLET By Carl Fauver | c.fauver@mycityjournals.com
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enerable (some might say “rundown” or “dilapidated”) Carriage Square is on track to receive a million-dollar facelift, thanks to a unanimous vote from the Taylorsville City Council to provide three-quarters of that amount through their federal Community Development Block Grant funding, provided over several years by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. “I applaud the council for supporting the Carriage Square proposal, because that area (4100 South Redwood Road) is a gateway to our city,” said Mayor Kristie Overson. “It is a unique site and now we have an opportunity to highlight it. It is a gem we really need to accentuate.” As it turns out, the only reason $758,694 in HUD money is available to fund Carriage Square improvements is because another federal department, the Environmental Protection Agency, killed the city’s original plan for the Uncle Sam handout. Ken Donarski, an independent consultant to Taylorsville City on projects like this for nearly 20 years, explained. “For seven years, the city has been setting aside some if its CDBG money each year for a project to remodel the Taylorsville Senior Center, to nearly double the size of the kitchen there,” Donarski said. “However, a few years ago, an environmental study determined there is ground contamination outside the senior center, from an old dry-cleaning shop that had been there years ago. We tried for a couple of years to mitigate the problem. But eventually HUD said ‘no’ to the project.” Once the senior center kitchen expansion was dead, city leaders faced another challenge. “The city had been setting aside CDBG funds for the proj-
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Potholes (lower left) and store facades will soon receive repairs and makeovers at Carriage Square. (Carl Fauver/City Journals)
ect since 2014,” Donarski said. “The trouble is, if you don’t spend that money within seven years, HUD takes it back. So once the senior center plan was gone, we needed to identify another project that would meet CDBG requirements, before we started losing chunks of that money each year.”
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Taylorsville Economic & Community Development Director Wayne Harper said the timing was right, because about the time the senior center project fell “off the table,” members of the Carriage Square Property Owners’ Association began putting a new idea “on the table.” Continued page 6
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