BOOMS Tracker – A new more extensive inventory system to allow for more building assistance.

Federal and state assistance programs work at a much faster pace than a decade ago. New incentives may pop up with a very limited timeframe in which to act on behalf of building owners. Collecting newer information fields can lengthen the timeframes required to access new resources for our building owners, and the increased time commitment may result in missed opportunities.

Enter the BOOMS Tracker. This newer system from Main Street America can enable a more comprehensive inventory that includes several datapoints required for most types of assistance. One of our new Emporia Main Street interns, Eduardo Diego from Emporia State University, is leading an effort to collect comprehensive data points for our community core.

You can help with the data collection effort by CLICKING HERE.

Right now, Eduardo is using our existing database system, the historic inventory, Beacon information, and a host of other online resources to map and note every core building. Historic photos, current images, building states/usage, and more are noted within the tracking program. Each data point allows us to better identify support mechanisms that may be used for each facility.

Why is that important? We have some vacancies downtown, but many of those vacancies exist because building owners are unwilling to rent, sell, or renovate their structures. We don’t have an effective mechanism to force people to do something constructive with their building (it’s a problem we will continue to work on). Building owners that are willing to rent, renovate, or even sell their buildings often need maintenance or building rehabilitation assistance. Emporia Main Street has worked hard to bring historic tax credits, USDA funding, Network Kansas assistance, locally generated grants, upper story housing incentives, and every other assistance tool we can find to our property owners. Shorter cycles for some types of incentives means that we need better access to information in order to pair property owners with potential support.

If you are a property owner in the downtown area, please click the link above. Your assistance will help us expedite the data entry portion of the program. If you are a commercial property owner outside of the downtown area, Emporia Main Street has incentives that may work for your property, and your data collection will come in a future phase of the inventory process (we had to start somewhere).

Thank you for helping Emporia Main Street with this data collection effort! We look forward to converting the data to more opportunities for Emporia commercial building owners!