The City of Norwich could be looking at $10 million to revamp downtown areas, if the city is awarded the DRI funds. (Photo by Dustin Genter of 5th Dimension Photography)

NORWICH — Commerce Chenango President and CEO Kerri Green has been working hard to prepare an application for District Revitalization Initiative (DRI) funds through the Development Chenango Corporation (DCC).

"Through the Development Chenango Corporation, we have been working on the Downtown Revitalization Initiative application. That is the $10 million grant available through New York State," said Green.

The purpose of the DRI funds is to provide the money needed to revamp downtown areas across New York State. Green said Norwich had submitted an application in 2019, but ultimately didn't make it very far. Their 2020 application was then put on hold due to COVID-19.

"We had planned to apply for the 2020 round five, and so we hit the ground running in January. We met really regularly, right up until about everything with COVID. We still had a couple meetings, we thought they might still give out the money. Until we found out they weren't going to," said Green.

Fortunately, the 2021 application process is up and running. Green said the steering committee preparing the application got back to work about six weeks ago finishing up the work started in 2020.

"About six weeks ago we started working again because we were told the DRI would be available this year," she said. "So we already had a lot of that work already done. So our committee is in a really great place to be able to apply."