Multi-use building
$10,000 grant won for new chamber site study
By TRAVIS PURSER
Express Staff Writer
The Blaine County and Ketchum housing authorities have
received a $10,000 grant to plan a new building in Ketchum containing
affordable housing rental units, a new visitor center and new Sun
Valley-Ketchum Chamber of Commerce offices at the chamber’s current site
on Main and Fourth streets.
It may be possible to build as many as 15 to 25 affordable
units on the site, housing director Gates Kellett estimated.
Kellett won the grant through the Federal Home Loan Bank
of Seattle and First Security Bank of Utah.
"This is very good news," wrote chamber of
commerce executive director Carol Waller in a monthly report.
Kellett is searching for an architecture and design firm
to conduct a preliminary design study of the site.
"The whole point of the grant is just to study the
site," Kellett said. Depending on the study’s results, the existing
visitor center and surrounding structures may or may not stay.
Kellett said the project will probably include underground
parking, ground level retail space and affordable housing, though the
plans are still very "conceptual."
Michael Radway, chairman of the board of Federal Home Loan
Bank, wrote in an April 17 memo that the bank received 20 applications for
the grant and that five of those requests were approved.