Grant program looks to revitalize small towns

LINCOLN, Neb. (KOLN) – The distinct downtowns of Nebraska is one of the things that makes it special, but as many small towns dry up, some of those historic areas are decaying too.

A new grant program, passed last year in the state legislature and administered by the Nebraska Department of Environment and Energy, seeks to reverse that course.

The Dempster industrial compound in south Beatrice once pumped industrial lifeblood through the homestead town.

“When I was a little boy, that was running three shifts, and then I saw it stop,” said Ted Fairbanks, Beatrice City Council.

But over the last decade, Dempster has become a dumpster. A labyrinthine cavern of pitch black corridors with scenes frozen in time from its heyday.

“It’s the first thing when you come to town from this side,” Chet McGrury, the Beatrice Community Development Director, said. “You know, you get an impression, first impression that, ‘Ooo, things aren’t so great here, possibly.’”

So Beatrice leaders are looking for hope in a new grant program to slowly, but surely, transform the ruins into a green space.

State Senator Myron Dorn introduced the Revitalize Rural Nebraska Grant Program last legislative session. It’s $1 million aim to help small towns with the cost of clearing away rundown buildings.

“To clean that up,” Sen. Dorn said. “Get that so it’s now not an eyesore no more. That when people drive by, they go, ‘boy that makes our town not look very good.’”

The grant is intended for towns pinched for pennies, with populations of less than 5,000. But if there’s enough in the pot of this grant and others, some money could come Beatrice’s way—a welcome prospect as it tries to take down Dempster, one building at a time.

“It’s going to be really expensive, and we need to get these grants or we really can’t do it,” Fairbanks said.

The Department of Environment and Energy will accept applications for this grant program through February.

“I’m hoping a lot of cities apply for this because if we can show need for $3 (million) to $5 million, hopefully we can come back and maybe ask for more,” Dorn said.

Beatrice leaders said the city’s historic downtown has been coming back to life, but to really get there, they said they’ll have to lay Dempster’s haunting past to rest.

“Even to get this back to just a nice green space, another park,” McGrury said. “Something that just is not a an ugly, rotting building.”

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