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March 8, 2012
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Stellar Grant Entrance Construction Bid
As of March 7th, Greencastle applied for a Stellar Grant bid to fund beginning construction of DePauw’s Anderson Street entrance. The Stellar Grant is a federal program that has made 19 million dollars available to Greencastle. But each expense requires a formal bid. The grant requires all projects to be accomplished within three years.
Construction for the entrance is on track to begin in April and finish by Old Gold weekend in October. Along with this new entrance to DePauw, the grant is also funding a joint Greencastle and DePauw bookstore in downtown Greencastle, a Greencastle Wi-Fi bubble, home renovations, and transformation of downtown Greencastle facades.
A-Way Home Meeting
Greencastle Mayor, Sue Murray, held at the end of February to gage community interest in reopening Greencastle’s A-Way Home homeless shelter. The shelter closed last year due to insufficient funding. Mayor Murray says they have not yet been able to allocate proper funding to reopen the shelter.
MURRAY: "It seemed important not to just have continuing discussion about it, but to empower a group of people to come together, examine the issues, examine the possibilities, examine the opportunities, and say either yes, we think we can really get this done, or no, this isn’t the time. There’s not enough recovery in the economy, philanthropic giving isn’t enough, we haven’t identified separate funding streams."
Consultant Joel Rekas says the shelter is necessary because Putnam County’s 13.9 percent poverty rate and 44 percent of Greencastle students receiving federal aid. The nearest homeless shelters are in Terre Haute and Indianapolis. The minimum to reopen the shelter is 150 thousand dollars.
