And riverfront development in Warren is part of that proposal.

“We are thrilled to make it to the final round,” Ta Enos, CEO of the PA Wilds Center for Entrepreneurship, the entity leading the application effort, said. “We want to thank the many businesses and organizations who supported our Phase 1 application. There is a lot of work ahead. We are in it to win it for rural PA.”

According to a blog post, a total of 529 applications were submitted to the U.S. Economic Development

Administration’s Build Back Better program “to compete for the transformative investments, which aim to advance regional industry clusters and aid in pandemic recovery.”

Times Observer file photo An engineer’s drawing that details what current riverfront development proposals would bring to downtown Warren.

Just 60 move on to the next application phase.

“This is a huge deal for this region and for Warren,” Jim Decker, president/CEO of the Warren County Chamber of Business & Industry, told the Times Observer on Wednesday.

The selection to phase II brings two things, he explained — a $500,000 grant “to aid with the development and implementation” of “a formal application for funding of the identified initiatives.”

“We will be including essentially the entire riverfront development effort in our portion of the application,” he said.

That will including funding for a proposed boat launch, “riverbank improvements” and “enhanced passageway/walkway” from Breeze Point to the Conewango, a “redirection of traffic flow and parking from Liberty St. to Market St. along Clark St.” as well as funding for a bicycle pump track facility.

Times Observer photo by Josh Cotton Riverfront development is the focus of the county’s part of a regional Build Back Better Regional Challenge effort.

“The WCCBI will be working with (the) City of Warren and Trestle-to-Trestle taskforce in finalizing project details and budgets and development of our portion of the regional project application which will be coordinated directly with the PA Wilds staff,” he explained, noting that grants will range from $25 million to $75 million and could go as high as $100 million.

The post from the PA Wilds notes that the “region has seen double-digit growth in visitor spending in every county of the PA Wilds over the last decade, according to annual Tourism Economics reports released by the State Tourism Office. The last three years (2017-2019) have seen record-setting growth in visitor spending, to $1.85B, or about 11 percent of the region’s economy, supporting many small business startups and expansions in rural Pa.”

While the PA Wilds is leading the effort, they note that six “coalition partners” would “spearhead recreation infrastructure projects. According to a summary of the proposal published by the US EDA, the City of Warren is one of the six.

“We were excited to see that ‘Equity’ was EDA’s No. 1 investment priority for this program, and that underserved rural areas are identified as part of that equity conversation,” Enos explained. “Way too many rural regions in this country have been left behind. Ours is working to recover from decades of divestment and population decline. An investment like this would be transformational.”

They note that finalists will be required to submit final proposals by March 15 with 20 to 30 of the 60 finalists to be selected for funding next summer.

“We have the greatest concentration of public land in the Commonwealth here in the PA Wilds region. That is one of our competitive advantages, especially coming out of COVID, as Americans flock to outdoor recreation experiences in record numbers,” Enos said. “We also have 17+ years of partnerships and strategies around this work as a rural region. Our goal is to use both to build a more resilient rural economy.”