Idaho RLF up and running
Boise children’s dance, art studio earns first award
The Reuse Idaho Brownfields Coalition last month awarded its first loan and grant from its revolving loan fund.
The recipient of the money is the Treasure Valley Institute for Children’s Arts (TrICA) in Boise, which aims to turn a 100-year-old church into a children’s dance and arts studio (http://www.nwbrownfields-update.com/2008/02/boise-rallies-around-historic-church/). The organization will receive about $377,000 from the hazardous materials portion of the RLF. That money includes a $227,000 loan and $150,000 grant, says Jim Gruber, CFO for Sage Community Resources (www.sageidaho.com). Sage Community Resources is an economic development association of the cities and counties of southwest Idaho. It is the administrator of the RLF.
The money will allow TrICA to clean and stabilize the building, says Nellie Baker, executive director of TrICA. Once listed among the top five endangered historic sites by Preservation Idaho, the church not only suffered years of disrepair, but also had methamphetamine activity and lead contamination. Baker hopes the cleanup will begin by early July. It should take three to four months to complete, she says. A capital campaign will follow and the building is expected to be fully renovated and operational in 2012.
TrICA (www.tricarts.org), which serves about 4,000 children a year, plans to turn the former Immanuel Methodist Episcopal Church into a community space that houses everything from music, dance and recording studios to a children’s museum, children’s library and full theatrical stage. Doing so promises not only to bring together the community, but also to redevelop another section of the Hyde Park area, an older neighborhood with a reputation for hip restaurants and quaint shops.
The RLF money sets the long-awaited cleanup portion of the project in motion, Baker says. The organization has much appreciation for the Idaho Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ), Sage Community Resources and its community supporters, she adds.
“It’s been a lovely, collaborative effort,” she says. “We could not have done this without the brownfields program. Everyone has bent over backwards to provide funding for this project.”
Sage Community Resources, with the five other councils of government in Idaho and DEQ, formed the Reuse Idaho Brownfields Coalition. The coalition secured a $3 million from EPA in May 2005 to establish the Idaho Brownfields Revolving Loan Fund. Sage manages the RLF.
With the awarding of this money to TrICA comes much excitement, says Pat Engel, director of business and community development for Sage. In the past, there hasn’t been much interest in cleaning up these contaminated sites in Idaho, Engel says. That interest is starting to grow, and a variety of developers are inquiring about the RLF.
The partnership with TrICA is significant because it’s the first granting of RLF funds, Gruber says. Historically, other managers of RLFs have found that once the first project is funded, a snowball effect follows. That’s why Gruber expects to see more applications to the RLF in the near future.
In fact, Gruber would like to see the RLF portfolio in the $10 million to $15 million bracket. He thinks that could happen within 10 years: “If we could get up into the $10 million level, we could look at some of the more significant projects that we currently can’t make much of a dent in.”
