The Vision Iowa Board Wednesday awarded more than $6.3 million in grants to seven projects around the state. Board spokesperson Jessica O’Riley says the town of Clarinda will receive a $235,000 grant to build a museum honoring Glenn Miller.
Officials will hold a ground breaking ceremony for the museum today, which is also the kick off for the 34th Annual Glenn Miller Festival in Clarinda. "What I think is especially great about this Glenn Miller Birthplace Museum, obviously it’s honoring their native son and big band superstar Glenn Miller…but they receive donations from as far away as Japan from people who have come and experienced the festival and love Glenn Miller’s music," O’Riley said.
The project in Clarinda has a total price tag of just over $667,000. O’Riley says a $1.6 million award will benefit an addition to the Raccoon River Valley Trail through west-central Iowa.
"It’s truly a regional project that crosses Dallas, Greene and Gutherie Counties," O’Riley said. "It’s an additional 33 miles to their existing trail, which gets them up to about 90 miles of trails." Sioux City won a two-million dollar Community Attraction and Tourism grant to transform a downtown building into a museum.
"It’s an adaptive re-use of a structure downtown, which we always enjoy, and it’s going to be a nice historical museum in Sioux City," O’Riley said. The estimated cost of the entire project is nearly $14-million.
The Vision Iowa Board also awarded $2-million to help World Food Prize officials renovate an old Des Moines library into the Norman E. Borlaug Hall of Laureates. Much smaller awards were granted to projects in Holstein, Rockwell and Sidney.