Publication select ▼
MOUNT CLEMENS — The City of Mount Clemens announced on Aug. 21 that it would request the Department of Housing and Urban Development to release $3.5 million dollars allocated to pay for a portion of the Cherry Street Mall project.
Coming to the city in the form of a community project funding grant, the funds make up part of the $6 million total cost of the mall overhaul. The money was allocated to the city through the office of U.S. Rep. John James, R-Shelby Township. The request to HUD was mentioned as planned to be made “on or about” Sept. 3.
“We weren’t sure what to expect, honestly, because when you get allocations, it really depends on what pool of money they come out of as to what you have to go through to meet the requirements of that allocation,” City Manager Gregg Shipman said. “We’re going through the process. The big one is an environmental review and (we are) just about through that right now, and I just received the grant packet on Wednesday, Aug. 28.”
An environmental study makes up the largest of HUD’s requests of the city, which includes a historical review and filling out documentation through a grant portal. Shipman says the possibility of the city getting the CPS grant funds was never in doubt.
“We’re already approved for the funds, so long as we meet the requirements of the grant,” Shipman said. “We’re already awarded it, we just have to meet all the grant requirements now, and that’s what we’re in the process of doing.”
Shipman expects the money will come in around late September or early October with construction planned to begin in Spring 2025. Plans were in place to have construction already underway, which the requests from HUD have delayed. For the project itself, other funding allocation timelines have been impacted.
“We were pushing to try getting (HUD’s requests) done last year because there’s more than just HUD’s funding in this project,” Shipman said. “There’s several different pools of money to accomplish this downtown project and one of them is (Michigan Economic Development Corporation funding). We had a timeline with them that we had to meet, and they were gracious enough to extend that timeline to also meet the requirements of the HUD funding. We really appreciate that from them.”
The MEDC is providing an $813,000 grant for the project.
Downtown events that would otherwise take place in the Cherry Street Mall area, such as Macomb County Pride and the Downtown Development Authority’s Friday night concert series, were moved to locations elsewhere in the city. Pride took place on Main Street while Friday night concerts took place around Walnut Street and near the Anton Art Center by Macomb Place.
Downtown Development Authority Director Michelle Weiss says she was able to bring almost all of her events back into Cherry Street Mall once the timeline was pushed back, but the concerts had to remain outside of the mall due to contractual obligations with the stage suppliers.
Weiss sees the situation with the concert stages as a learning experience. Along with giving event attendees a peek into what events may look like next spring and summer, the alternate locations served as a trial run for how people would receive having events held outside of the mall.
“We moved the Pride festival to main street; we had planned that,” Weiss said. “We planned for the Urban Street Fair to be on Main Street and the audience loved it. They were both bigger than normal, more vendors than normal and it gave people an opportunity to see more of our downtown and more of our selection of businesses that we offer.”
The delay has also allowed for tweaks to the final design to be made. Shipman says some movable planters will be replaced with stationary ones along roads. The goal of the project is to make Cherry Street Mall more pedestrian-friendly by removing curbs, adding traffic calming devices and installing retractable bollards where Macomb Place meets Walnut Street and Pine Street.
You May Also Be Interested In
