A third business owner has asked a city board for tax dollars to revitalize his downtown Greenwood building, with a new door, windows and landscaping.
Dr. Jeremy Roscoe has already renovated the inside of a building off Madison Avenue to open Clown Pediatrics, where he, another physician and three nurse practitioners will see patients. But the outside of the building hasn’t had any work since its construction in the 1980s, and Roscoe asked the Greenwood Redevelopment Commission for help with a $74,000 project to renovate the exterior of the property.
The building was purchased for $300,000, and $250,000 was spent on renovations, Roscoe said.
He plans to install new windows, doors and outdoor lighting, as well as make landscaping improvements, such as replacing landscaping rocks. The new door is necessary in part due to an attempted break-in earlier this winter when they were damaged with a crow bar. The windows haven’t been replaced since the building was first constructed and aren’t energy efficient, Roscoe said.
He asked the redevelopment commission for a matching grant of $38,000.
“I wouldn’t be able to do all of it without the extra financing,” he said. “I would have just done the front door.”
The grant is the third request the city board has received since starting the GROW program, aimed at encouraging downtown business owners along Main Street and Madison Avenue to make exterior renovations to their properties. Last year, the board set aside $500,000 in funding from the city’s tax-increment financing, or TIF, districts to fund grants to downtown businesses to pay for projects such as façades, windows and lighting, as well as art, landscaping and masonry.
The commission approved spending $100,000 on two projects last fall. A business next to Clown Pediatrics along Madison Avenue, Storm Chiropractic, as well as a series of four downtown Main Street properties, were the previous two recipients of the program.
The board unanimously approved Roscoe’s project.
Roscoe first began his medical practice, Clown Pediatrics, in an office in Indianapolis, but the Greenwood Community High School alumnus wanted to move back into his community.
To do so, he purchased a building at 401 Camby Court along Madison Avenue. The building hadn’t had any major repairs since its construction in the ’80s. The interior was gutted and remodeled, but he didn’t have the funds to do all the exterior renovations he wanted.
Greenwood Redevelopment Commission President Brent Tilson described Roscoe’s renovations as a perfect example of what the city is wanting to get out of this program.
