Funding

Main street projects receive coordinator salary subsidies, building rehabilitation grants, project planning funds, and discretionary funds for a range of marketing, economic development and design activities. These funds are provided to partner communities in the form of cost-shared grants provided by the Alberta Historical Resources Foundation through the Alberta Main Street Program:

  1. Coordinator salary subsidies enable each community to hire a qualified main street project coordinator. The local partner organization, such as a municipality, BRZ or other organization, contributes half of the coordinator’s salary and provides employee benefits plus a small travel expense allowance for the Main Street coordinator to attend quarterly meetings with other project coordinators across the province.
  2. Building rehabilitation grants make up the majority of project funding and are provided toward the rehabilitation of historic building fronts within the main street area according to federal Standards and Guidelines for the Conservation of Historic Places In Canada. These historic buildings are generally more than fifty years of age and have been determined to have local heritage significance with a high degree of physical integrity. A smaller share of building funds supports the construction of appropriate businesses signs and the enhancement of building fronts in the main street area that are not historically significant but which have an impact on the general character of the heritage area. All of these “bricks and mortar” funds are provided on a matching basis to building and/or business owners. Additionally, a portion of building funds is used to retain a professional architect whose expertise in heritage building rehabilitation is provided by each main street project at no cost to building and business owners.
  3. Planning funds support a Visioning Session and a Resource Team Session, an intensive series of public consultations and design workshops held at the inception of each main street project that produces a detailed project plan or “resource team reports”. Planning funds are also used to prepare a final project report and architectural guidelines for the main street area. These funds are distributed under the discretionary category.
  4. Discretionary funds support various marketing, economic development and design projects identified by the project community according to its unique needs within broad program guidelines. These activities can include the development of downtown tour brochures and interpretive signs and plaques, the development of marketing programs for the historic downtown, and the organization of local business workshops. These funds also support planning initiatives described above.
Cowan Building, Jasper East Village

The project coordinator, architect and municipal heritage planner examine the Cowan Building in Edmonton’s Jasper East Village.

The combination of program expertise and resources backed up by shared funding is a powerful motivation for change.