The Windham and Bennington County Regional Commissions have received $472,000 in disaster recovery funding from the federal government. The goal is to revitalize the economy in Southern Vermont, an area hard hit by the 2011 flood. Part of the grant will pay for a series of workshops to help strengthen village centers and downtowns. The first will be held Tuesday night in Wilmington.
Laura Sibilia says the workshops are designed to help each community develop a plan to make their village or downtown more resilient in the long term.
“A plan for better lighting, or a plan that makes sense to extend sidewalks,” said Sibilia. “Or some efforts to beautify, maybe in a way that kind of identifies the downtown, possibly doing some promotion of villages and downtowns. How can we do that in a consistent way?”
Sibilia is with the Brattleboro Development Credit Corporation. She helped write the grant from the Commerce Department. Sebilia says besides workshops the grant is also funding two flood recovery officers in southern Vermont, who are helping business owners access help for recovery from the flood---and build a network of southern Vermont businesses.
“When you have a natural disaster come in and do the kind of damage it did to commercial centers in an already declining economy, it was like, O.K., we need more help here. We need big help.”
The grant is also tackling another piece of the southern Vermont economy: how to draw more tourists to the area. But Sibilia says the project is also looking at how to bring more businesses and skilled workers to the region.
“We need a way to identify southern Vermont,” said Sibilia “What does southern Vermont mean in terms tourism, in terms of living here, in terms of working here, in terms of moving your company here? So we are going to develop a brand. “
Sibilia says the project has just hired an advertizing agency from Denver that specializes in helping communities strengthen local economies by marketing their unique strengths.
