Lexington is among the half-dozen recipients of a $50,000 Assessment and Planning Grant from the Virginia Economic Development Partnership and Virginia Department of Environmental Quality, the governor’s office announced in a press release last week.
City Manager Tom Carroll told The News-Gazette in an email that the grant funds, which will be matched by the city’s Economic Development Authority, will be put toward making improvements to the former VDOT property on Waddell Street that the city owns.
The first priority for the funding is remediation of an underground fuel storage tank on the property. If any funds remain after the tank is removed and cleaned up, they will be put toward other environmental work on the property, such as removing asbestos from unoccupied buildings on the site.
The Timmons Group, a Richmond-based engineering firm, is assisting the city and EDA with the project.
“We are grateful to Governor Spanberger and the Virginia Economic Development Partnership for investing these resources in Lexington,” Carroll said. “We are a built-out community with a limited available taxable tax base, so redeveloping sites like the VDOT property will have a positive benefit Lexington. We appreciate the governor and the state of Virginia seeing this as a high priority since we know there are many priority areas that would also benefit from this funding.”
