Funding program that helped save Olivia wins award | Local News

A downtown advocacy group’s efforts to revitalize historic buildings was honored last week by a statewide business organization.

Downtown Joplin Alliance won the Best Historic Preservation Project Award for its work to establish its Endangered Properties Program, which has a goal to renovate deteriorating buildings with futures that are in doubt. The award was given by Missouri Main Street Connection during a program held earlier this month in Kansas City.

The alliance won a $100,000 grant from the 1772 Foundation after a successful feasibility study, according to a news release from Missouri Main Street Connection. The first building to get that grant funding was the historic Olivia Apartments, located at Fourth and Moffet. Plans for renovation of the building, already suffering from a leaky roof and other structural damage, were under development when a fire in December 2020 destroyed the roof and fifth floor.

In the months afterward, new developer Blue Haven Homes made a deal with the alliance to purchase the building for renovation into 38 apartments ranging from one to three bedrooms each. The city of Joplin also invested $250,000 to assist with roof construction that would protect the 115-year-old building’s interior.

In October, the developers informed members of the Joplin City Council that the work had been successful, and the Olivia was no longer in danger of being demolished.

The alliance is using the same program to market and analyze Union Depot on North Main Street for development. According to the release, the program “has given the community another tool in the toolbox to save and rehabilitate historic properties in Joplin.”

Missouri Main Street Connection is a statewide nonprofit group that supports, celebrates and sustains historic commercial districts. The group has been celebrating a milestone of $1 billion in public and private investments into Missouri Main Street districts. Those projects have created 5,069 new jobs and 1,068 new businesses between 2006 and 2021, according to the release.

Follow Digital Editor Joe Hadsall on Twitter at @JoeHadsall.

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