Tyrone and other officials met last month to continue to look for possible sites for a downtown motel while another potential site has essentially been removed from the picture.
\nFormer Mayor Patricia Stoner was appointed in October 2005 as a liaison for the borough regarding the possible motel, Streetscape and certain other projects. She was at Monday\u2019s council meeting and informed members the long-talked about 900 block of Pennsylvania was no longer an option.
\nCurrent Mayor Jim Kilmartin told The Daily Herald the major stumbling block was that the property owners were unwilling to sell to make way for the development of the motel site.
\nKilmartin said of the 900 block, \u201cWe\u2019d love to revisit it, but the property owners aren\u2019t interested.\u201d
\nThe mayor said he along with Stoner, Borough Manager Sharon Dannaway, councilman Jim Grazier and officials from the Altoona Blair County Development Corporation and the Department of Community and Economic Development met on March 27 to discuss the motel and look at possible sites. Kilmartin said he could not reveal what the potential sites where since nothing had been decided.
\n\u201cWe were looking through the downtown area and we don\u2019t want to lose the historic value and what we have to offer there,\u201d said Kilmartin. \u201cWe want to work with what we have and we want to bring this in.\u201d
\nHe said the borough wants to \u201cmake it look its best downtown\u201d and bring the motel here \u201cin the most efficient way possible.\u201d
\nThe borough, through the efforts of ABCD, has been seeking $650,000 in grant money from DCED to prepare a site for the development of the motel.
\nAn application for the $650,000 was submitted in October 2004 to DCED\u2019s Housing and Rehabilitation Assistance program for the purpose of acquisition and demolition of properties. A DCED spokesperson told The Daily Herald yesterday that the department\u2019s records show the application is still pending. He said he could not confirm the amount of the application or when it might be approved.
\nIn January of 2005, ABCD\u2019s Patrick Miller said other smaller funding in the amount of $33,100 was approved through the Pennsylvania Financing Authority for predevelopment aspects for a motel site. Those funds were secured through the Business in Our Sites program. He said if the $650,000 was approved by DCED, his organization planned to apply for more funding through the Business in Our Sites program to complete predevelopment aspects including acquisition, demolition and additional site preparation.
\nKilmartin said he had to refrain from revealing who the potential developers are at this point. He said DCED would have to give its consent for the motel site, which would have to meet their standards since they would be providing funding for site development if the grant is approved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Tyrone and other officials met last month to continue to look for possible sites for a downtown motel while another potential site has essentially been removed from the picture. Former Mayor Patricia Stoner was appointed in October 2005 as a liaison for the borough regarding the possible motel, Streetscape and certain other projects. She was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-41455","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news-in-the-tyrone-pennsylvania-area"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41455","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=41455"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41455\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=41455"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=41455"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=41455"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}