This is the audio from our monthly radio show: Focus on Stafford County. The show aired in February, 2024. Topics include an upcoming Lunch & Learn book discussion of “Thirteen Ways to Kill your Community;” updates on Stafford County’s commercial kitchen, childcare; Gray Photo Studio grant, art auction and renovation; EPIC grant projects in Stafford County and the Sttafford train depot.
This is the audio from our monthly radio show: Focus on Stafford County. This show aired live Thursday, Jan. 25. Topics included a $50,000 HEAL grant that was awarded to the W.R. Gray Studio in St. John and a $50,000 loan from SJN Bank for the studio’s renovation. Other subjects included the Stafford County Port Authority, updates on the upcoming Youth Entrepreneurship Challenge; the county’s commercial kitchen, childcare, the Community Fair Building and new housing construction.
This is the audio from our monthly radio show Focus on Stafford County. This show aired in December. It includes discussion on Giving Tuesday, Stafford County’s commercial kitchen, the partnership between Stafford County Economic Development and the Ida Long Goodman Memorial Library’s Lunch and Learns, a new gazebo for the St. John Square and some upcoming grant writing workshops.
Stafford County Economic Development has been working hard the last 2 years to complete 10 houses that are in St. John, Stafford, Hudson, and Macksville respectively. These houses have government requirements for income and age and meet the need of a critical group in our community. We are now looking for a lucky person or family to move into the last house in Macksville. The 412 W. Halveson house has a large yard and has 3 bedrooms and 2 full bathrooms. The other houses in the county are now called for. The house on First and Monroe in St. John was recently filled and the house in Hudson has someone moving into it starting in November. If you or someone you know needs housing in Macksville please contact Housing Opportunities Incorporated (HOI) our partner who manages the houses. Reach out to HOI by phone (620) 792-3299.
This is our September 2023 Radio show with our director Ryan Russel
The new rental houses completed earlier this year in St. John and the currently under construction in Macksville are part of the nine house county-wide rental housing Stafford County Economic Development (EcoDevo) started building in September 2021. The first house was built in Hudson and completed in February 2022. Three houses in Stafford were completed in June 2022. The three houses in St. John were completed in January 2023. And the final two houses in Macksville should be completed by August 2023.
EcoDevo is having to slow down its plan for a New Housing Development Program that would have built 10 more houses. Its fall 2022 application for a Moderate Income Housing Grant was not awarded funding. The Kansas Housing Resource Corporation received around $19 million in Moderate Income Housing grant requests in its fall grant cycle and was only able to award about $5 million in funding.
Stafford County Economic Development has engaged Housing Opportunities Inc (HOI) a nonprofit in Great Bend to take over property management of their rental properties effective March 1. Stafford EcoDevo’s rental portfolio has grown from three units to eleven in just over a year with two more houses still under construction.
