By KEN CARPENTER
Great Bend Post
Great Bend Economic Development (GBED) is taking another step to help renovate buildings in downtown Great Bend.
GBED already led the effort to get city funding to assist downtown building owners meet fire safety codes and redo upper floors in their buildings. Meanwhile, last summer and fall, Barton County awarded more than $600,000 in grants to improve the exteriors of buildings in the county's largest four cities, including 26 buildings in downtown Great Bend.
GBED director Sara Hayden is also seeking another source of funding to help building owners.
"So we’ve been working towards a historic designation in our downtown,” Hayden said. “With all of this renovation and things getting underway, we wanted to enable our property owners to be able to apply for historic tax credits, historic renovation grants. So we want to make sure that we contribute to helping these buildings to continue standing. They are old buildings.”
Hayden explained what her organization has already done.
“We had a consultant come in, do all of the history for our buildings downtown, find out what they were used for, finding photos of them when they were first built and throughout time. It is really cool stuff.”
A map of the Great Bend Historic District and the Historic Resources Survey can be found on the Great Bend Economic Development website under the Great Bend Alive section.