Danville is re-applying for about $947,000 in grant-funding it would use to complete a “streetscape” project for Main Street between Second and Fourth streets.

Danville City Commission voted to submit a new application to the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet’s Department of Rural and Municipal Aid at its meeting last week.

The project would replace all sidewalks, curbs and lighting on both sides of the street. Danville’s first application was denied this summer. Officials said at the time they believed the primary reason for the rejection was because the city already has another streetscape grant project in the works, this one for Main Street from Fourth to Fifth streets.

City Engineer Earl Coffey said Danville is “regurgitating” its original application with some updated information.

“We feel like the same application is still applicable,” Coffey said. “… It is the same application as last year, but with updated numbers.”

If the city is successful this time around, it would have to cover 20 percent of the streetscape cost, which is estimated at $236,795, Coffey said. Combined with the $947,178 being requested in the application, the total project cost would be $1,183,973 — just south of $1.2 million.

Last year, the city had requested about $928,000 in grant funding and planned to spend around $232,000 in local funds, for a total price tag of about $1.16 million.

Mayor Mike Perros asked Coffey what could be done this time around to “enhance” the city’s chances of landing the grant.

The city refiled its application prior to the Oct. 1 deadline from the state. Coffey said city staff would “contact some of the folks at the state office and investigate that question further — if there is, we’ll let the city manager know.”

“We really need this badly,” Perros said.

Trails grant

Danville has also authorized the Clarks Run Environmental Education Corporation (CREEC) to pursue a $21,000 grant from the Brown-Forman Foundation to add a trailhead along Stanford Road.

If the grant application is successful, CREEC could build a parking area, signage and benches “to improve access to the trails system being developed in this area,” Preston Miles, with the Danville-Boyle County Trails Alliance, told the commission.

The trail head would be located at the intersection of McClure Drive and Stanford Road, at the end of a recently constructed paved trail that runs to Stanford Road from the Batewood Park area off of South Second Street.

There are plans to continue the trail on from Stanford Road to the area of East Main Street. All of the plans are part of a larger, master plan being pursued by the Trails Alliance to create a network of walking and biking trails that allow people to navigate around Danville and into rural Boyle County without using motor vehicles.

“We like free money,” Perros told Miles. “The more the better.”

Miles said this is the first time the Brown-Forman Foundation has been approached for a grant in the Danville-Boyle County area, so he doesn’t know how likely it is the grant will be received.