A vacant building in downtown Perry that once housed the Eagles lodge and later a bar is poised to begin a new chapter as a community resource center.

“The concept behind the resource center is to bring together local growers from our farmers market,” said Delbert “Butch” Niebuhr, Perry’s city manager. The two-story, 3,300-square-foot building will be equipped with a community kitchen for use by growers, and in the future, the upper floor may be completed as artists’ lofts, he said.

The renovation project, which has an estimated price tag of $1.6 million, is one of several Central Iowa projects to receive funding through the Iowa Great Places program.

Earlier this month, Gov. Chet Culver announced that 25 Iowa Great Places grants totaling $2 million had been awarded to 16 communities across the state. The grants were funded through the I-JOBS program, a jobs retention and creation program initiated by Culver and paid for through issuance of bonds. As part of those grants, the city of Perry received $100,000 for the Perry Resource Center.

Among other Central Iowa awards, the city of West Des Moines received $200,000 to use toward a renovation of the old city hall into a welcome center, complete with a classroom area, computer laboratory and a history museum. West Des Moines officials are considering a number of environmentally friendly features for the building, among them a geothermal heating and cooling system and a green roof.

Clyde Evans, community and economic development director for the city of West Des Moines, said the Great Places program funding has been beneficial to the city. “It’s allowed us to undertake some projects that might not have happened otherwise,” he said. For instance, earlier Great Places funding enabled the city to proceed with fire sprinkler renovations in some of Valley Junction’s buildings to bring them up to code.

West Des Moines recently received $500,000 from the I-JOBS Main Street program for the old city hall renovation, and Evans said the city plans to put the project up for bid in September. “We’ll have to see where the bids come in, but we’ve got sufficient funds now to move forward with the project,” he said.

The city plans to seek Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Gold designation on the project as proof that “you can do a historical building in an environmentally sensitive way,” Evans said.

Perry is also nearly ready to move forward with its renovation project, Niebuhr said. In addition to its $100,000 Great Places grant, the city has been approved for a U.S. Department of Agriculture loan of $700,000. It also has an application pending for a Community Development Block Grant of $500,000 as well as additional grant funding of $200,000.

“Once all the grants are in, the project will go to the City Council for final approval,” he said. The city has hired RDG Planning & Design to assist with cost estimates for the project, which Niebuhr said has a tentative cost of approximately $1.6 million.

One of the first steps will be for the city to purchase the building from The Nudgers, a private nonprofit group in Perry that has bought and renovated several other historic structures in the city in the past eight years.

“This building is probably a little bit more than they bargained for,” Niebuhr said. “It’s in pretty bad shape. That’s why we targeted it for a resource center. And since it shared a common wall with the theater, we wanted to make sure we didn’t lose any good businesses.”

Perry officials hope the resource center will enable more farmers to sell their produce directly to 10 institutional cafeteria facilities in the area, among them senior center kitchens. It will also support cooking classes provided by the Hispanics United for Perry group.

The resource center could also provide another connection between Perry and Des Moines Area Community College (DMACC), which is currently building a $3.1 million education center in the city. DMACC hopes to use the city’s facility to expand its culinary arts program to Perry, if there is sufficient interest from students, said Rob Denson, DMACC’s president.

Denson said the DMACC Center, funded through a combination of a $1.55 million I-JOBS grant and college and private funding, is still on schedule to be completed in time for fall 2011 classes.

The facility, which will be equipped with approximately $1.2 million in equipment to offer computer, automotive technology and welding courses, will enable nearby school districts to provide high school juniors and seniors with vocational and technical training during the day, as well as courses for working adults on the weekends.

Other programs to be offered will be health sciences and criminal justice. Additionally, English as a Second Language and General Equivalency Diploma programs will be offered.

Denson did not have a staffing estimate for the center, but with an average of 30 students per program, it’s expected to serve between 500 and 700 students per year.

“We’re also very excited about the diverse community that we’re going to serve, and the ability to help build skills within that community,” Denson said. “Perry is really a community on the move, and we’re aggressively helping their community to go to the next level.”