Millville non-profit continues redevelopment role
MILLVILLE - A non-profit corporation formed almost five years ago to take on the burden of local redevelopment initiatives in Millville is just a few months away from seeing one of its earlier and most substantial efforts open for business.
Millville Urban Redevelopment Corp., “MURC” for most local conversations, is the owner of a property at North High and Vine streets where work is nearing an end on construction of a Cumberland County College extension.
The Cumberland County Arts & Innovation Center, being built at a cost of more than $6 million, is expected to be ready for use in January 2017.
MORE NEWS: Board moves concern city commissioner
While MURC started off working as a redevelopment contractor for city government, nonprofit officials stress the organization has been financially on its own for almost two years now. A contract with the city expired on Dec. 31, 2014.
“Basically, the board would like it to be known we’re still an active organization and we’re still trying to do good things for the city of Millville,” Executive Director Donald Ayres said. “We’re basically an apolitical group that is working with a lot of organizations.”
Often, MURC efforts are collaborative with organizations like the Cumberland County Improvement Authority, New Jersey Community Capital, Capital Bank, Cooperative Business Assistance Center, and the longer established Millville Development Corp. It also works with the Millville Neighborhood Alliance, an association of more than 40 organizations.
Attorney Arnold Robinson, legal counsel for MURC since its start in October 2011, said community-based activism is the operating model for MURC. The same is true for the Millville Neighborhood Alliance, he said.
“We’re not looking to city government for answers,” Robinson said. “We’re not looking to city government for money. These are community-based people, volunteers, who are pulling together to say, ‘We want to make this community better.’ It’s totally apolitical. The only thing that matters is results.”
The college center project on North High Street was an attention-grabber for MURC. But MURC has kept busy with a number of other projects with lower profiles:
- Food manufacturer Hank Sauce, a business MURC courted to set up here, is getting ready for a ground-breaking for a 10,000-square-foot facility on Orange Street.
- MURC arranged a $50,000 loan to help start Glasstown Brewing Co., which opened in December 2013 at the municipal airport.
“And Glasstown Brewing has paid us back every dollar and it has transitioned into a successful business that now has bank financing and is growing,” Ayres said. “That is a poster child for what we do.”
- MURC also assisted the Millville Development Corp.’s purchase of the former Liz Ryan building on North High Street, along with a spinoff relocation of Bogart’s Books and Café into that building.
“We funded that whole process because we thought it was important economically and community-wise for them to have book store, coffee shop in downtown Millville,” Ayres said. “We funded them through not a gift, not a grant, but a loan to move down to the new place, to hook up with that new building. … And it’s thriving success.”
MORE NEWS: Ayres returns to non-profit as director
Often, Ayres said, MURC efforts are collaborative with organizations like the Cumberland County Improvement Authority, New Jersey Community Capital, Capital Bank, Cooperative Business Assistance Center, and the longer established Millville Development Corp.
Ayres, a former Millville city economic development director, said MURC also plans to be a partner in the Holly City Development Corp.’s pending “Creative Enterprise Center” on East Mulberry Street.
That project involves reconstructing a Holly City Development-owned building to contain a mix of work spaces and an apartment, with businesses offered a monthly membership. The project is among a half-dozen Holly City Development is mounting using federal tax credits as funding.
MURC, the Millville Neighborhood Alliance, and the Cooperative Business Assistance Center are working together to acquire residential and commercial properties in Center City for rehabilitation. The goal would be to eventually sell the properties but they may be rentals at first, Ayres said.
Kim Ayres, the coordinator of the neighborhood alliance, said her organization is waiting for word on a grant application it and Holly City Development submitted to the Wells Fargo Regional Foundation. The grant would be used for planning work on neighborhood revitalization.
Ayres said alliance’s application made it through the first review round and the foundation has done a site visit. The alliance already has funding from New Jersey Community Capital and from the Cumberland Empowerment Zone, she said.
“And I’m quite certain that, of the 12 people that applied for that funding, no one can demonstrate a partner base of 45 partners,” she said. “That’s the heart of the organization.”
Joseph P. Smith; (856) 563-5252; email@example.com