Times Observer photo by Josh Cotton City of Warren Mayor Dave Wortman, center, speaks during Monday’s county commissioner work session at the courthouse. The commissioners agreed to allocate $500,000 to the riverfront redevelopment project but showed no appetite to go higher.

Officials remain optimistic about the Build Back Better Regional Challenge grant application that would transform the city’s riverfront.

But the target for that grant has shifted. At the behest of the feds, a total of $1.8 million has to be removed from the amount originally requested as part of the grant.

Jim Decker with the Warren County Chamber of Business & Industry, as well as officials with the City of Warren, approached the Warren County Commissioners on Monday for assistance in overcoming that shortfall.

While the commissioners publicly affirmed their intent to allocate $500,000 in American Rescue Plan dollars to the riverfront project, there was no appetite to go higher.

That leaves Decker and city staff until Wednesday at noon to find the funding or pare back the project.

City of Warren Mayor Dave Wortman called it a “really exciting project” during the commissioner’s work session Monday. “We’re still looking for the county commissioner’s support as well as part of this project.

“Hopefully we can move forward together on this one.”

Decker told the commissioners that they’re “not putting all” of the eggs in the BBB basket. He also shared that the request is currently $7.25M with the city matching $2 million.

He talked more broadly about the importance of the project.

“Our biggest challenge is loss of population over the last 30 years,” he said, “with nothing terribly encouraging in the forest that that trend is going to reverse.”

“It is absolutely critical we do everything we can do to stall the loss of population,” he added. “One way is to make sure our communities are attractive and vital. That’s the impetus behind this project.”

He cited a projected $11.3 million economic impact annually from the project.

“It’s significant to say the least,” he said.

Decker told the commissioners that the Economic Development Administration has directed the finalists of the Build Back Better program to reduce their ask to less than $50 million. That means the PA Wilds application, of which the riverfront project is a part, has to drop from $73.7 million to under that threshold.

“Everybody has to go back to the drawing board,” he said, with $1.8 million needing to be cut from the Warren project. “All of the elements of this project are interconnected,” making it difficult to pull individual elements out. The focus, he said, would be to pull items “frankly where we have the best chance of recovering the monies” with other funding streams.

He added that the WCDA has $40,000 from the original floating dock project to contribute and the city recently received a $95,000 grant for engineering costs from the Pa. Fish & Boat Commission. He asked for additional county dollars to “help us bridge the gap.”

Commissioner Jeff Eggleston said there are “a lot of different buckets” of federal funding “that we could go after,” suggesting the “rural nature of the community” could boost those applications.

“The value in this project is shown in the value of the projects before it,” he said, citing the Loranger building development. “That project never would have happened without state funding.”

Decker said their focus is on “what commitment can we have in place by Wednesday midday to make that final decision moving forward.”

The commissioners agreed to include a resolution on Wednesday’s meeting agenda to commit $500,000 in American Rescue Plan dollars to the project.

There was no desire to go further.

“I feel pretty confident the other funding can be found,” Eggleston said. “Eventually this project is going to get funded one way or the other.”

He said he would “have a very hard time” committing more than $500,000 in county funds.

LIBRARY FUNDING DISCUSSED

Eggleston said a $1.6 million renovation is underway at the library and that library officials discovered that state grant funding allocated by the city can’t be utilized for the project.

“They’re kind of in a pinch,” he said, proposing a $25,000 allocation from either Rescue Plan or savings funds “given the fact that the library serves a lot of purposes county-wide.”

“I’m generally supportive of that,” Commissioner Tricia Durbin added.

A resolution for both of these projects will be before the commissioners for action at Wednesday’s meeting.