The Havre Downtown Master Plan has been accepted by city council. Now that the plan has become official Sara Strissel the Director of Community Planning at Bear Paw Development explains what is happening next.
“So the next steps are the fun part where we as Bear Paw Development working with Downtown Havre Matters, Hi-Line Arts Council, everybody who has been involved with this process form day one, we can keep our eyes open for potential funding so that we can pursue some of these goals as they become available, and working with the city to make sure that it is something that is feasible for the city of Havre.”-Sara Strissel
She continues to explain what they are currently working on at Bear Paw Development to start implementing the Master Plan.
“Julea and I just wrote two grants that we’re waiting to hear back on based on it. I wrote one for a feasibility study over a local business here in town so that we would be able to see what it would cost to have property owners invest in their vacant upstairs areas to turn it into much needed housing units in Havre as well as project what revenue could potentially come from that project and then Julea wrote one to do a lot of wayfinding and signage. These are just two examples of attainable projects that we had available to us, and we were able to locate the funding. So, it’s kind of cherry picking from the plan to find projects that work.”-Sara Strissel
Julea Robbins the Director of Community development at Bear Paw Development explain the overall process of choosing and implementing projects from the Master Plan.
“So, the great thing about this plan and about all the groups involved is there’s so many people that are invested in this plan and so there are a lot of eyes out for different areas of funding. Of course, we’ve got people here at Bear Paw that are constantly looking at grants that are coming down, but there’s also other community partners such as the Havre Chamber and the Havre Trails group, they are dedicated to doing niche projects and they see different streams of funding than we do sometimes so they’re also on the lookout. So, while we might not be working on this every day, we will always have our eyes open and be looking out for things.” -Julea Robbins
