The Town of Upland hosted its quarterly town hall meeting Tuesday night, which focused on updating the community on the Main Street Mile initiative and the Lilly grant Taylor University received for it.
Taylor University Vice President for Strategy and Chief of Staff Will Hagen spoke at the town hall and gave residents some of the background of the project and explained its future.
Hagen said the Lilly Endowment announced an opportunity in February 2023 for colleges and universities to apply for grants for projects that would be mutually beneficial to both the institution and the town it was located in. In addition to the mutually beneficial requirement for projects, another stipulation for the grant was that the funding from Lilly could only make up a maximum of 30 percent of the project costs.
Taylor University only had a few months to apply for the grant, so it put together an advisory task force that was made up of both university members and local community members, sent out a survey to community members and held listening sessions to figure out what projects would be most mutually beneficial to the university and Upland.
Some of the themes that emerged in the information-gathering stage were that people wanted the town to appear more welcoming to visitors, that there was a shortage of housing, that there was a lack of hospitality options like an inn or sit-down restaurant and that the stretch between campus and downtown was not accessible by walking due to a lack of good sidewalks and lighting.
“None of the ideas that we’re putting forward with the proposal are brand new ideas,” Hagen said. “They’re things that we heard had come up in previous planning efforts that the town has done and many of the things that people have been thinking about and talking about for years. But we now have a new funding source, this possibility of funding from the Lilly Endowment, that made some of these ideas that were old ideas possible.”
When applying for the funding, the university had to provide a big-picture idea of what the projects might look like, but the details of each facet of the project still have to be hammered out through more opportunities for public input, Hagen said.
“Lilly was really pleased with the proposal. They really liked the ideas and they had originally set the maximum funding that they would give would be $25 million,” Hagen said. “They ended up actually giving $30 million to this project. So that was a wonderful endorsement from them and it’s something that we’re really excited about.”
The total cost of the project, between the $30 million from Lilly, funding from the university and funding from developers, will be $103.7 million, Hagen said.
The first part of the project Hagen talked about was a “significant expansion” of the local library. According to Hagen, the library in Upland is per capita one of the most used libraries in the state.
Another aspect of the project is transforming vacant spaces into a mixed-use building that could hold a restaurant and provide space for people to open new businesses.
A small boutique hotel or inn across from campus is also on the agenda for the project, as well as a housing development.
Some of the funding will also be used to expand the sidewalk being put in along Main Street and install lighting along it to make sure there is a safe, easily walkable path between campus and downtown Upland.
Additionally, the plan includes the creation of revolving funds, one of which would allow community members to apply for funding to undertake beautification projects on their homes and another would provide aspiring business owners with the funds to launch their businesses.
Hagen emphasized that no profit from any of the projects will go to the university and that the profit will instead go back into those revolving funds to sustain them.
Hagen also said that the university will not own things like the hotel. It will donate the land, but a third-party group will operate the hotel.
Hagen anticipated that information about the revolving funds will become available in the next few months. The next year will be used to plan out the various aspects of the project, and Hagen said that around this time next year will be when they will break ground for the projects.
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