FREDERICKTOWN — Downtown Fredericktown is set for a facelift.
The village received word back in October it was receiving a grant for Phase 1 of the Downtown Streetscape Project. It’s going to be a while before the makeover officially happens (2023), but the design and engineering portion have started, so the ideas are starting to flow.
“We don’t want to lose our small town appeal. We want to be a quaint little village, but we want to capture some of the historical architecture,” said Village Administrator Bruce Snell. “We’re trying to make it a destination — a place where people want to come into town and have lunch.”
Phase 1 of the project will follow Main Street from the old mill to Second Street. The nearly $1 million project will be mostly funded by a federal grant administered by the Ohio Department of Transportation. The grant will pay 95 percent with the village picking up the rest (about $50,000). Fredericktown did have to cover the design and engineering fees, which amounted to $258,000.
There has been one small surprise in the engineering study when they discovered some of the old coal chutes used for the buildings had not been properly filled.
The idea for the project came from Jeff Harris, former president of the Area Development Foundation. He told Fredericktown officials about what Mount Vernon had accomplished in its downtown area and they then met with Brian Ball, Mount Vernon City Engineer, about their project.
Discussions with ODOT then led to an application for the grant in October 2019, which was awarded recently.
“We’ve been wanting to do this for a long time. We just never had enough money. We got in just in time,” said Fredericktown Mayor Jerry Day.
The village hopes to have more concrete plans in place when the design portion is completed. Because of the funding involved in the project, groundbreaking won’t take place until 2023. Snell said he hopes it takes about six months to complete once started.
