Gastonia awards $7,500 for Main Street building renovation

  • 2015-10-04
Gastonia City Council has agreed to provide grant money to supplement costs for two local businessmen who recently purchased and wish to renovate a downtown property.

Brad Parkes and Tom Cox are the new owners of 201 W. Main Avenue, the building that use to house Morris Jewelers. With renovations for the multilevel property anticipated to be about $400,000, the pair of businessmen decided to try for a grant to help cover their costs.

Parkes and Cox applied for a $2,500 façade grant and a $15,080 upfit grant from Gastonia’s IDEAL program. IDEAL grants are available to qualified downtown businesses and are funded by a special tax paid only by property owners in the downtown area.

Any improvement to Gastonia’s business district is seen as a boost for all business owners. For instance, designed for multiple tenants, once the Morris Jewelers Building renovations are finished, numerous uses for the services of a printing company will surface.

Although city leaders are excited about the renovations the two entrepreneurs are undertaking, they felt that they could not provide the full amount requested because it would virtually drain the IDEAL grant fund. While not as much as they had hoped for, the $7,500 will still help make the renovations happen.

The Morris Jewelers building facade has been an ongoing project for over a couple of months. The building’s interior work is expect to begin this month.