The City of Clear Lake announced, at the Cerro Gordo County Board of Supervisors meeting on Jan. 29th, that they are planning to apply for a $1.5 million Community Attractions and Tourism (CAT) grant to offset costs related to immersive technology upgrades for the Surf District’s new Music Enrichment & Immersive Center and they asked the supervisors to partner with them.
Clear Lake City Administrator Scott Flory explained that when they originally applied for the Destination Iowa Grant the plan consisted of a streetscape project and a reimagined music enrichment center. “Through our process of sort of reimagining the scope and purpose of the Music Enrichment Center, we talked about the displays, the exhibits, the things that would be in it, and these were more static kinds of things. Through our conversations, we thought if we were going to ensure that this is relevant in the 21st Century, we need to be more exciting than this… so the Gen Zs, the Millennials, the Gen Xers, that it’s interesting to them,” said Flory. He said they came up with the idea of utilizing immersive technology and retained the services of the Mechdyne Corporation, who specializes in audio visual, immersive, and virtual reality solutions. However, along with the technology came a lot more cost.
Flory said they started having some conversations with the Iowa Economic Development Authority leaders, because they already had $4.5 million dollars invested in the project and Flory wanted to make sure they would be on board with the Surf District upgrades. Flory said that not only were the leaders excited and impressed, they encouraged the city to look into applying for a CAT grant.
“One critical component of that is funding, in particular, from private parties, but also from the county as well. So we’re here today to ask for your support along the lines of a funding contribution so we can make this application to the Community Attractions and Tourism component of Enhance Iowa through the Iowa Economic Development Authority. We know without that, the odds of us getting any additional funding for the Music Enrichment & Immersive Center will be daunting,” Flory said.
“I know there’s a lot of folks that put in a lot of sweat equity for that and there are, specifically, three of you that volunteer a lot of your time and I’m sure, resources as well,” said Casey Callanan, District 2 Supervisor. “I’m very much supportive. And I think we just need to get a pen to paper and figure out what we can do.”
