Newcomerstown receives $786,000 from state to paint downtown area

• The Newcomerstown facade project was a recipient of the Appalachian Waterfront Development money under the Appalachian Community Grant Program.
• Painting is expected to start in August and finish by 2025.

NEWCOMERSTOWN − The village of Newcomerstown is about to look as spiffy as it feels after receiving a $786,000 Appalachian Community Grant that will literally paint the town in antique, muted colors.

“Every building on our Main Street that can be painted, will be painted,” said Mayor Pat Cadle, who added that all 22 business owners designated for painting were given a pamphlet from Sherwin-Williams and will pick their own colors from a designated palette. “We’re going to give our town a nice facelift.”

That facelift includes some additional cosmetic procedures including new sidewalks, burying gas, water, and electrical lines, and replacing old light posts with 14 new ones. Buildings that have approved stone and brick exteriors won’t be painted.

“When we’re done it’s really going to look nice,” said Cadle.

The Appalachian Community Grant Program was instituted in 2022 by Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine, Lt. Governor Jon Husted, and Ohio Department of Development Director Lydia Mihalik in conjunction with the Ohio General Assembly.

The overall program funneled $500 million into Ohio’s 32-county Appalachian region to transform these communities through economic development projects. Competition for the grants was stiff, to the tune of more than $5 billion in grant requests, according to the Ohio Department of Development office.

The Newcomerstown facade project was a recipient of the Appalachian Waterfront Development money under the Appalachian Community Grant Program.

Painting is expected to start in August and finish by 2025. Once the painting is complete, Cadle said they’ll start tearing up sidewalks and burying the lines, before then accessing a half million dollars in Ohio Department of Transportation funding to lay new sidewalks in 2026.

But that’s not all.

“We’re building a new train depot,” said Cadle.

Newcomerstown is the North Pole in the famed Polar Express ride, sanctioned by Warner Brothers and Rail Events, that starts at The Dennison Depot. Cadle said Dennison proposed a passenger rail project that would spur economic development through months outside of the Polar Express ride in December between Newcomerstown, Dennison, and Coshocton.

Dennison did not receive the grant, but it hasn’t stopped Newcomerstown from moving forward with the three-year project to build a new train depot and platform. “It would be seasonal through the summer,” Cadle said of the program that would transport tourists back and forth between the areas for all the summer activities they come for. Including kayaking, biking, and wine trails. “It would really spur that tourist element.”

It all feeds into a much larger economic development plan that Cadle and his team of like-minded individuals have been working on for eight years.

“We started with the town itself,” he said of tearing down old buildings and factories that were eye sores and unusable. “The nice thing that starts happening when you do that, is that the pride grows in your town. People start taking care of things, (outsiders) start looking at us differently, and now our reputation is changing.”

He said Newcomerstown has already seen the benefit of cleaning up the area with two new businesses coming in and a developer bringing housing.

“Our 2024 has been unbelievable with what’s happening,” said Cadle. “Once we did the cleanup, the more possibility we created for ourselves.”

He said the Appalachian Grants from Gov. Mike DeWine have exceeded anything he’s ever seen in the state of Ohio before.

“He has done more for the state and made more money available to do things with your town, than has ever been available before,” said Cadle. “He’s done an outstanding job with providing opportunities for towns to get better.”

He said Appalachia in particular has felt the cold snub in the past, which was especially poignant when the highways bypassed small towns like Newcomerstown in the 1970s.

“This place used to be like a little Mayberry,” said Cadle. “When the big highways came in, they bypassed us, and all that traffic that used to fuel the economy was gone and we never adapted to the change.”

He said the town lost its identity for a bit and when he came in the 1980s he could tell there was more to it.

“I’ve always thought this town could be more than what I saw,” he said.

And now he’s in a position to do something about it.

“I’m in the right place at the right time,” he said. “And I have wonderful group people who are on the same page of what we want to do in Newcomerstown.

“Pride is coming back to the community and that’s going to help us grow that much more.”