Belleville DDA working on call for proposals for hardware store

At the May 20 meeting of the Belleville Downtown Development Authority, DDA member Phil Miller explained that the committee formed to deal with the former hardware store the DDA owns is working on a draft of a RFP (request for proposals).
Miller said the DDA legal counsel is helping them and they hope to have the RFP finalized to present at the next DDA meeting on June 17.
“Finally, it isn’t going to be the worst problem we have,” Miller said of the long-vacant hardware store.
DDA vice chairman Chris Donley, who was presiding at the meeting in the absence of chairman John Winter, said he is hoping it will turn out to be other than a service-based business.
Miller said they have to pay attention to the zoning ordinance and can’t deny anything that’s allowed in there.
At the end of the meeting, Miller said the committee had some good conversations on the “Wherehouse,” which used to be the hardware store. He said he appreciated that people were able to reconsider their ideas.
The DDA convened May 20 with a bare quorum of five – Donley, Miller, Sabrina Richardson-Williams, mayor Ken Voigt and Valerie Kelley-Bonner — with four members absent: John Winter, Denise Baker, Mike Gatteri and Whitney Beaubien.
In other business at the 55-minute meeting, the DDA:
• Discussed the DDA Director position and took no action. Present director Steve Jones said he is staying on as the interim city manager until the city budget is done. Miller said the compensation for a full-time or part-time director needs to be put in the DDA budget ahead of time;
• Heard Donley say some of the things on the follow-up list that are ongoing projects should be taken off the list to tighten it up. He said there should just be projects on the list that the DDA is actively working on. Jones said he had removed many items from the list to shorten it, but he could do what Donley wanted, as well;
• Heard treasurer Richardson-Williams question the work of the Goodbye Geese company, since she said she still sees geese in Victoria Commons and hasn’t seen the company at work there. The DDA voucher list to be approved was paying the April charge of $870 each for Village Park and Horizon Park, for a total of $1,740. Jones said the company comes at different times of the day and at different locations. Also, once the chicks are hatched, the geese don’t go anywhere until they are big enough to leave;
• Heard Kelley-Bonner report on the June 6 Civic Duty Education Day the DDA is helping to sponsor from 1-3 p.m. at Fourth Street Place outside the Belleville Area District Library. Survivors Speak is putting on the event, supported by SOOAR. People will be able to meet elected officials, get snacks, get faces painted, see the animals brought by the Creative Teacher, and take part in a Play Station-5 giveaway;
• Heard Kelley-Bonner also report she was working on the “You Matter, Belleville” project on suicide awareness in November. She has ordered 100 flyers for downtown businesses;
• Heard Miller ask Jones about the status of the EV charging stations. Jones said it was an ongoing project and at the end of last week he finally got ahold of somebody. He said DTE is part of the holdup, but there are disagreements with how it was going to be done. He said he was assured it would be done. He said it has been a year that the units in the library parking lot have been in place and it’s been three years since they started the process. There are four sets of EV stations planned: library parking lot/new city hall, Village Park, Victory Park, and Liberty Street parking lot;
• Was informed there is a draft of the DDA budget but unresolved issues will affect the figures and it will be a living document;
• Heard Donley announce that 207 Belleville High School senior banners arrived that day and volunteers are expected to put them up on May 21. These will be up for three weeks and then the other half of the banners will be up for three weeks;
• Heard Donley describe online projects to draw people downtown. He said an idea Miller had about artists bringing artworks downtown according to themes, the way Miller had seen it work in California, is a good idea. But, he said it would take “a group to get it off the ground and an army of volunteers”; and
• Heard Richardson-Williams compliment Donley for the Wings of Hope sculpture recently erected in Horizon Park. Donley said the sculpture was his idea in memory of Harper Mathis, the teen who died of brain cancer, but the credit goes to the family and the foundation that supported it once he brought his idea to them. He said he recently saw the sculpture from the lake and it was shining and beautiful.