Citing NCDC s leadership transition and a desire to allow businesses with ties to NCDC apply for COVID-19 relief grants, the city will oversee the grants.
Norwich When Angela Adams sought advice a year ago on how best she could help local businesses as executive director of the Greater Norwich Area Chamber of Commerce, Jason Vincent offered a vision for her.
Vincent at the time was co-chairman of the chamber’s economic development committee and vice president of the Norwich Community Development Corp.
“He said I am the gatherer,” Adams recalled Wednesday of Vincent’s concept of both their roles. “I bring everyone into a room, and he’s the planner to help find solutions to the problems we have. That’s where he was such a big part. That’s where everyone relied on him.”
Norwich Norwich teachers wondering why a certain student isn’t in school on Feb. 12 or April 14 now can consult a special calendar posted on the school system website to see if there’s an important national or religious holiday on that date important to the student’s family.
It’s not the official school holiday or vacation calendar, but Norwich school officials and Global City Norwich have teamed up to create a cultural calendar denoting dozens of significant events to people of different cultures and nationalities worldwide.
The 2021 cultural calendar starts with Haitian Independence Day on Jan. 1 and runs through Kwanzaa Dec. 26 through Jan. 2. So far, 49 dates are listed, including 21 independence days five Central American nations share Sept. 15 as their independence days.
Norwich The city will ask the Norwich Community Development Corp. to take the lead in distributing federal community development block grant funds to assist small businesses facing hardships caused by the coronavirus pandemic.
The City Council last week approved a resolution designating NCDC, the city’s economic development agency, to administer $219,569 in CDBG funding the council allocated for small business relief back in June. The funding was part of a $506,569 CDBG coronavirus relief grant the city received in June.
But delays in receiving the funds and the need for guidance from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development on eligible uses held up the application for several months, Kathy Crees, supervisor of the city’s community development program said Monday. One major question resolved two weeks ago allows the funding to be used by businesses to pay utility bills to Norwich Public Utilities.
NORWICH Even though the holiday lights aren’t in the downtown year, the Norwich Community Development Corp. is working on a way for decorative lights to be in the city year round.
The Broadway and Main Street Streetscape Lighting Project, introduced in an August report from NCDC, the Chelsea Groton Foundation and Global City Norwich, consists of having zigzagging LED lights along the intersection of Broadway and Main Street. Work on the project began this past week, and will be finished and lit this coming week, said Global City Norwich liaison Suki Lagrito.
The report said the project is a part of the larger Places/Spaces/Faces effort by Global City Norwich, which seeks to use “murals, lighting, and other space activation, to increase vibrancy.”