Eight Homer Businesses Wait on $450,000 as the Village’s $10 Million Downtown Grant Grinds Through State Review

HOMER, N.Y. Three and a half years after New York State handed the Village of Homer a $10 million Downtown Revitalization Initiative award, not one of the eight Main Street area businesses promised a share of $450,000 in storefront renovation money has been cleared to swing a hammer. That was the update Melanie Vilardi, executive director of the Cortland County Business Development Corporation and Industrial Development Agency, delivered to Mayor Pat Clune and the village board of trustees at their July 28 meeting inside the 1908 Town Hall at 31 North Main St.

The eight awardees read like a walking tour of Homer’s downtown: Homer Men and Boys, Little Italy, the Brewster House, Arnold’s Florist, Berkshire Hathaway, Endure Industries, Classy Canna and the building at 15 S. Main St. Together their projects add up to roughly $600,000 in planned work, with the state covering $450,000, or 75 percent, and the owners putting up about $150,000, the remaining 25 percent, according to WXHC’s report on the meeting.

The money comes from the DRI Small Project Fund, a $500,000 line item in the $9.7 million project slate the state approved for Homer on May 22, 2024. It was designed to be the fast, simple piece of the village’s downtown overhaul: modest grants for facades, interiors and repairs on the historic commercial blocks that face the village green. Instead, it has become a case study in how long state money takes to reach a village of 3,210 people.

Why nothing has been built yet

Vilardi, whose agency administers the fund for the village, told the board the holdup is procedural, not local. Every project, no matter how small, must clear the same state gauntlet: hazardous materials certifications, floodplain and coastal zone determinations, engineering inspections, a state review phase and then competitive bidding that carries New York’s 30 percent participation goal for minority and women owned business enterprises.

“If you’re doing a $10 million project or a $70,000 project, basically the parameters are the same,” Vilardi told the board, per WXHC.

The current bottleneck is asbestos. Ashley Riehlman, the agency’s community relations specialist, told trustees that testing is underway at the project sites. “Asbestos testing has started, and we received some results from a couple of them. They should hopefully be finished up next week with the last three or four project sites,” Riehlman said at the July 28 meeting. Engineering inspections for five of the projects are expected in the following weeks, after which the paperwork goes back to Albany for review before anything can go out to bid.

Clune pressed for a construction timeline at the meeting and did not get a firm one. The Cortland Standard, which also covered the program, reported the village had announced the $500,000 distribution to the eight downtown businesses for renovation and repairs, describing the fund as financing interior and exterior building improvements meant to lift the look of downtown’s historic commercial blocks.

The sequencing matters for the owners. Until the state signs off, none of the eight can lock in contractors, and construction pricing quoted at application time keeps aging. Once bids do go out, each package must document a good faith effort toward the 30 percent minority and women owned business participation goal before a shovel or a paint brush touches any of the storefronts along the Main Street corridor whose historic character made Homer’s application stand out in the first place.

A $10 million bet on a 19th century Main Street

Homer’s award was announced on Feb. 14, 2023, when Secretary of State Robert J. Rodriguez came to the Center for the Arts of Homer on South Main Street to name the village the Central New York winner of the sixth round of the Downtown Revitalization Initiative. Round 6 sent $10 million to one community in each of the state’s ten economic development regions, a $100 million statewide commitment. Homer beat out larger contenders across the region for the money.

The pitch leaned hard on history. Village historian Martin Sweeney told Spectrum News in May 2023 that Homer counts some 220 historic structures and described the district as the largest historic district in New York State. The claim has a real foundation: the Old Homer Village Historic District, centered on the village green along North and South Main Street, was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on Oct. 2, 1973, under reference number 73001176. The district takes in the 1908 Town Hall, the 1863 Jebediah Barber building, the 1887 to 1888 Brockway Block and residences dating to the 1810s. The village itself was founded in 1791 and incorporated in 1835, and its green remains one of the best preserved New England style commons in the state.

Then Mayor Hal McCabe, who led the village through the application, told Spectrum News in 2023 that state grants would cover only about 30 percent of the total project costs, with private investors carrying the rest, and called an investment on that scale “enormous” for a village Homer’s size.

Winning the money was only the start of the paperwork. Under DRI rules, Homer had to convene a local planning committee of municipal representatives, community leaders and other stakeholders, run public workshops, pop up events and online surveys, and submit a full Strategic Investment Plan to the New York State Department of State by December 2023, according to the village’s DRI page. The open call for project proposals went out in June 2023, with office hours and submission templates offered to would be sponsors. The state then spent months winnowing those pitches before releasing its final funding list the following spring.

Fifteen months after the award, on May 22, 2024, the state released the final slate: 11 projects sharing $9.7 million. The largest single award, $3.5 million, backs a boutique hotel development downtown. The Homer Festival Grounds get $1,420,000 for an east west pathway from Main Street, overflow parking, pavement reduction, new sidewalks, trees and rain gardens. The Little White Church restoration takes $1,170,000 for phase one of its conversion into the Homer Cultural Center. A commercial kitchen, community center and year round farmers market building gets $823,000. A riverwalk overlook gets $652,000, a wellness spa $500,000, commercial space on Wall Street $396,000, the downtown marketing and signage program $300,000, the historic Water Street bridge restoration $300,000 and the Village Food Market interior $139,000. The Small Project Fund’s $500,000 rounds out the list.

New mayor, same clock

The village that won the grant is not the village managing it today. McCabe resigned at the end of December 2024, and the board of trustees unanimously named Pat Clune, the village’s deputy mayor since 2017, to replace him. Clune was sworn in at a January 2025 board meeting, then won a full two year term in the November 2025 village election with 112 votes, per Cortland Standard election results.

Vilardi is also new to her seat. She took over as director of the county’s Business Development Corporation and Industrial Development Agency on May 5, 2025, after serving as Cortland County’s deputy county administrator, so both the village and the agency shepherding its signature grant have changed leadership mid stream.

Where Homer can already see progress

The DRI ledger is not the whole story, and the village has visible wins to point at this summer. On July 9, Clune joined Neb and Florie Hage to unveil the sign for the future Hage Riverwalk Park on Homer Avenue, next to the CNY Living History Center, on land the Hage family donated at the site of the former Budget Inn motel, which burned in April 2015. The park plans call for shaded areas, a kayak launch and a small pavilion on the corridor connecting Homer and Cortland. “12 years to get to this point. And we almost didn’t make it,” Clune said at the unveiling, per WXHC.

Village crews are also getting ready to repave Water Street, North Williams Street and Hudson Street in August or September, work Clune said the village expects to recoup through its state CHIPS highway aid, which came in slightly higher this year. Paving on Dee Street was finished earlier as a housing development there prepares for construction. Residents on the three streets will be asked not to park curbside once the Department of Public Works posts the schedule.

The green the state is paying to amplify

The irony of the wait is that the asset the DRI is meant to supercharge is already working. The village green hosted its fourth annual National Night Out on Tuesday, Aug. 4, from 5 to 7 p.m., with the Homer Police Department, Homer and Cortlandville fire departments, the Cortland County Sheriff’s Operation Safe Child program and a YMCA glow run to Durkee Park. Homer Police Chief Bob Pitman previewed the evening as “a great way to meet your first responders and your service providers.”

Music on the Green, the recreation department’s free Wednesday concert series at the gazebo, runs at 7 p.m. through Aug. 26, sponsored by Bob’s Barbecue and the Homer Business Association. The back half of the ten show season brings Molly and the Ringwalds on Aug. 5, Travis Rocco on Aug. 12, the Steve Daniels Swingtet featuring Sam Daniels on Aug. 19 and Dock Holiday to close on Aug. 26. Movies on the Green, which opened July 9 with Zootopia 2, continues Thursday nights through Aug. 13. The Homer Regional Farmers Market sets up more than 20 vendors on Saturdays from 9:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. through Oct. 31 in its 2026 season.

Every one of those crowds walks past the same storefronts still waiting on Albany. The festival grounds project, the cultural center, the hotel and the market hall are all bets that those crowds will grow. For the eight business owners in line for the first real checks, the schedule is now measured in weeks, not years: engineering inspections on five projects are due in the coming weeks, and Riehlman told the board the final asbestos results for the last three or four sites are expected back during the first week of August.