BRISTOL, Va. — The Bristol Redevelopment and Housing Authority received a $500,000 federal planning grant Monday with a goal of ultimately revitalizing public housing and the greater neighborhood.
Richard Monocchio, the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s principal deputy assistant secretary for public and Indian housing, participated in a ceremony announcing the grant. Bristol was one of 13 cities nationwide to receive this latest round of planning grants Monday, he said.
It will enable the local housing authority to initiate a long-term study of how best to improve existing public housing and the surrounding Virginia Hills neighborhood.
“Choice Neighborhoods is the signature [federal] development program in the country. Communities, led by a public housing authority, get together with local partners and put together a plan to revitalize older public housing neighborhoods,” Monocchio said. “The goal is to apply for an implementation grant which can be up to $50 million to implement the plan.
“In this case, it involves about 500 [proposed] new townhouses, family homes and apartments, which could be incredibly transformational,” Monocchio said.
Other planning grant recipient communities include Birmingham, Alabama; Detroit; Houston; Miami, Florida; Joliet, Illinois; and Tucson, Arizona — all much larger than Bristol.
“The impact of the federal dollar is really exponential,” he said. “When you get that kind of federal investment in relatively smaller communities, the impact is more transformational.”
Once the plan is completed and submitted, Bristol would be competing with other communities for implementation funding of up to $50 million. HUD presently has issued and is awaiting plans from about 40 other communities nationwide, he said in response to a reporter’s question.
The total amount of funding available is up to Congress to approve as part of the HUD budget.
The planning process can take up to 30 months to complete, according to Lisa Porter, executive director of the Bristol Redevelopment and Housing Authority.
“With the $500,000, we start to lay the groundwork of what we would do to hopefully apply for the $50 million implementation grant. Sometimes you have to apply more than once,” Porter said. “It involves not only addressing distressed public housing. We want to look at the entirety of the neighborhood and stabilizing that neighborhood.”
The grant study area includes the Virginia Hills historic district bordered by Scott Street, Piedmont Avenue, Euclid Avenue and Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard.
It includes the area north of Bristol Virginia City Hall, northeast and southeast of Virginia Middle School, south of Court Street and west of MLK Jr. Boulevard.
That encompasses all of the authority’s existing public housing — Rice Terrace, Sapling Grove, Mosby Homes, Village at Oakview, Johnson Court and Stant/Jones — neighborhoods and the former Virginia Intermont College campus on Moore Street.
Once intended as the site of Virginia Business College, the former VI campus is privately owned by Chinese investors and city leaders continue to express concern over its deteriorating condition.
Porter said they are “keeping an eye” on the VI property.
“If we were fortunate enough to get the implementation grant, we be able to address VI,” Porter said. “We would love to be at the table and see what we can do to make VI and that property be a meaningful part of Bristol again.”
Del. Israel O’Quinn, R-Bristol, praised the collaboration which brought the process to this point.
“No entity — it doesn’t matter federal, state or local — can tackle all of the challenges any locality has and certainly not something of this size. It takes collaboration and the pooling of all of our resources to help us get there,” O’Quinn said.
“Hopefully this grant will cause to look at what we have and dream about what we can have and make it a reality. The areas you all are targeting stand to benefit from a well-planned redevelopment effort,” he said. “Hopefully it will culminate in a bold, community-oriented plan that can be implemented successfully.”
Bristol Virginia has the second oldest housing authority in the state, which means it operates some aging housing stock, Porter said.
Developing the plan could take up to 30 months, Porter said.
“I am so excited about this,” Porter said. “I’ve never gotten emotional about a grant award but I cried all night Thursday night [upon learning of the award]. It’s not the dollar amount — I’ve gotten bigger dollar amounts – but it’s the program and the doors it could open.
“The only awards that have been made in Virginia were in Newport News and Norfolk, five or six years ago. I saw what it meant to them and what they did with that,” Porter said. “It gives them a leg up applying for tax credits with the state and they’ve done a lot of commercial work.”
Twitter: @DMcGeeBHC
