Staff photo by Fritz Busch Main Street, downtown Sleepy Eye as seen near Sleepy Eye Brewing Co. Wednesday afternoon. The Sleepy Eye Downtown Revitalization Committee recently received a $10,000 grant from the Blanding Foundation.

SLEEPY EYE — The Sleepy Eye Downtown Revitalization Committee (DRC) plans to use a $10,0000 Blandin Foundation Leadership Boost Grant to continue efforts to make the downtown district feel like a great place to be.

“By receiving this grant, we can continue to improve the aesthetics, the feeling of wanting to spend more time downtown, adding more amenties along with existing shops and businesses and creating more civic pride,” said Sleepy Eye EDA Coordinator Kurk Kramer.

In addition, Kramer said the DRC will continue to add downtown attractions such as murals to exterior building walls, artwork, flowerpots, a poetry walk, sculptures and other aesthetically pleasing items.

In cooperation with the Sleepy Eye EDA (Economic Development Authority), the DRC was invited to apply for a creative platemaking grant.

Sleepy Eye downtown project descriptions include retaining and maintaining historical aspects of buildings, restoration to return buildings to their original appearance, renovating buildings that have been extensively modified, finding new uses for buildings that outlived their original use, redesigning sound buildings that don’t enhance the streetscape and filling streetscape gaps with new construction that is compatible in size, material and color of surrounding buildings.

The Blandin Foundation received more than 300 letters of interest for $5.5 million in grants Three grant rounds included community planning, capital projects in towns with less than 3,000 people and creative place-making.

(Fritz Busch can be emailed at fbusch@nujournal.com).