
Governor Hochul announced the creation of the NY Forward program to invigorate and enliven downtowns in New York’s smaller and rural communities—the type of downtowns found in villages, hamlets and other small, neighborhood-scale municipal centers. NY Forward builds on the success of the Downtown Revitalization Initiative (DRI) by adopting the same “Plan-then-Act” strategy as the DRI. The State has allocated $100 million for the first round of NY Forward. Each of the State’s ten Regional Economic Development Councils (REDCs) will have the option of recommending two communities for $4.5 million NY Forward awards or three communities one of which will receive $4.5 million and two will be awarded $2.25 million.