(Nebraska City) -- Nebraska City is seeking state funding sources for its extensive renovation of a venerable structure.
Meeting via ZOOM Monday evening, the Nebraska City City Council approved the city's request for a letter of intent to apply for a grant from Nebraska's Civic and Community Center Financing Fund. Speaking on KMA's "Morning Line" program Tuesday morning, Nebraska City Mayor Bryan Bequette says funding from revenues from the state's major arenas goes into the fund. Bequette says grant money from that fund is limited this year.
"This year, because there wasn't a lot of revenue coming in from the big arenas--Pinnacle Bank Arena, Ralston, the CHI Health Center arena in Omaha, places like that," said Bequette, "they have taxation area around those, and some of that gets peeled off for rural communities to also put in for. Last year with COVID, there wasn't a lot of money coming in, so only planning grants are available this year." Mike Peterson Bequette says funding from the grant will assist the city in planning for two additional projects at the Veterans Memorial Building.
"We put in money for a planning grant for our Memorial Building," he said, "to look at the building to see how it can be used to revive the old theater stage, to make it usable for, like, community theatre, or schools if they want to use that venue, and also look at the kitchen redesign in the basement. There used to be a fairly decent commercial kitchen, where they used to do meals on wheels, and things like that from."
Thanks to earlier grant money and donations, Bequette says some renovation has already been completed inside the building.
"Well, the first thing was to make it weather secure," said Bequette. "So, we completed the roof, and then the window project. Pella out of Iowa came in, and did an outstanding job. Over a hundred windows were replaced, and matched with new, modern efficient windows, but kept the old look and feel. They did an outstanding job on that, so the building is now weather tight."
Another project addresses handicap accessibility. Work is underway on installing a new elevator, and increasing the size of building's bathrooms, making them ADA accessible, as well.
In other business, the commissioners approved an application for two grants to the Wirth Foundation: one totaling $38,000 for new fencing field 2 at the softball complex, and $5,500 for resurfacing Steinhart Park's basketball court. You can hear the full interview with Bryan Bequette on our "Morning Line" page at kmaland.com.