Community Spotlight: Main Street Micro Grants in Spencer, Iowa

On February 14, Spencer Main Street officially launched a brand-new initiative called the Main Street Micros Grant program. This has been a year in the making, and we were thrilled to see it come to fruition. It started as just an idea a year ago followed by 6 months of hammering out the details. We wanted to do something specifically for the Main Street District, voted on by the Main Street Board, and we’ve never had that.

We are doing two cycles of grants, one in the Spring and one in the Fall. Each cycle, we will award a total of $20,000. The grant prize winner in each cycle will get the max of $10,000.  In essence we are pouring $40,000 a year into downtown.

“We wanted to help facilitate the growth and development of our current Main Street Businesses, enhance the visual appeal and help upgrade the unusable space in our upper stories. We are really excited about injecting this shot of money into our downtown economy,” said Board President Eric Meeter.

The grant monies can help with building/façade improvements, business expansion and/or development, and code requirement upgrades for upper story renovation and development. There is an extensive application process including a 3-5 minute video pitch and a set of judging criteria based on the Main Street Iowa Open4Business Competition. Each applicant has to match 25% of the project cost.

In the first round, we had 9 applications with a total ask of more than $83,000. This demonstrated that clearly there is a need and a desire for this one-of-a-kind project. First place was awarded to Madeline Iles, owner of Posh Salon. She recently bought a building on Grand and renovated the inside. She was awarded funds for exterior façade improvement.

2nd place was a tie, and each winner got $4,100. Owner Robin Edwards with DermUs Skin Care has been part of the community for 20 years, 10 years in Downtown. They are remodeling part of their space to add another room for services and their lobby area. Owners John and Shelby Haak at Skin Joy Med Spa also got $4,100 They are a brand new business that will offer injectables. They are partnering with DermUs to connect their buildings (taking out a wall) and they will share the lobby. Skin Joy took ownership of a building that was vacant after Edward Jones moved out. And 3rd place went to Jim and Julie Vermeer with Vermeer Glass Art. They asked for $1,825 to help pay for a new kiln. They are a destination location and bring a lot of people from outside the county to town.

With this project, we hit on three different aspects: Façade improvement, expansion of services with an established business and a fairly new one, and helping a new business get started. We are so pumped to offer this program.  I think this sets us apart from other communities and will only spur grander things downtown.