State of the City
Published 11:23 am Friday, February 18, 2005
By By JOHN EBY / Dowagiac Daily News
More than 200 houses have been improved in the past five years through the $10,000-a year incentive program.
Up to $500 per home is available for exterior work.
Another "huge issue" at the outset of the Lyons administration in 1997 was drugs, Nelson said.
These opinions reveal "philosophical underpinnings," Lyons told Rotarians.
The city has negotiated with "three or four developers of movie theaters over the last four or five years," Nelson said. "We've gotten very close with a couple of them, but for whatever reason at the last minute they got cold feet. But that remains on our agenda as a priority. We're hopeful that the data we get from the study will help us with that and some other 'void' prospects," Nelson said. "One of the biggest issues is financing the theater building itself. We have made informal arrangements with a couple of builders for a lease-purchase arrangement to finance it up front."
Nelson defended enlarging the industrial park because of federal dollars leveraged to pay the lion's share of the infrastructure.
Dowagiac's wastewater treatment plant constitutes a "regional asset" in partnership with Cassopolis and Sister Lakes, Nelson said. "Some of the things we've done that have gone unnoticed is doing street and sewer projects" diverted storm water that cut the plant's capacity when it was treated. "We've brought on 2,500 new customers," he said.