LAKE PLACID — The village intends to apply for a $10 million state Downtown Revitalization Initiative grant.

At the board of trustees’ regular meeting Monday, the board unanimously authorized Mayor Craig Randall to send a brief letter to Stephen Hunt, regional director of Empire State Development, highlighting the village’s intention to apply for a DRI grant.

“We will be reaching out to other members of our community to help with this process, as our goal, if received, is to use the funds to cover a broad spectrum of upgrades,” Randall’s letter reads.

Applications for DRI grants in this area are first reviewed by the North Country Regional Economic Development Council, which as of last year was chaired by Jim McKenna, CEO of the Regional Office of Sustainable Tourism and a member of the Adirondack North Country Sports Council. The NCREDC will then nominate a community, and the state makes the final award. After that, a local planning committee is formed to piece together a final plan for using the grant funding, which gets submitted to the state again for approval.

The state doles out millions of dollars in grants every year to 10 regions throughout the state as part of the DRI. Last year, Potsdam was awarded the $10 million DRI for the North Country region. The year before, it was the village of Saranac Lake; in 2017 it was Watertown. The city of Plattsburgh was the first municipality in the North Country to receive a DRI grant in 2016.

“This is only a preliminary step,” Randall said Monday. A community group to look at possible DRI projects has not been formed, and this letter only signals the village’s intent to apply for a grant.

The DRI application process is competitive, he said, but even if the community doesn’t win the projects put together by a local planning committee could act as a foundation for applying for other grants.

“This is an opportunity for Lake Placid to look forward and determine what projects it might undertake if such opportunities were presented to it,” he said. He cited the possibility of gaining funding to build a parking structure as an example.

Randall on Monday pointed to Plattsburgh as a model for how the DRI can help fund large-scale projects that might otherwise not be undertaken. Plattsburgh’s DRI, he said, is producing “really major” downtown revitalization projects currently navigating through the planning process.

Plattsburgh’s DRI process has been embroiled in controversy for years. The largest project, which accounts for $4.3 million of the $10 million total, is the proposed construction of a mixed-use building. That building would include 10,000 square-feet of commercial space on the first floor and 114 housing units on floors above, according to the Plattsburgh Press-Republican.

It would replace the Durkee Street parking lot, one of the city’s largest sources of parking for both visitors and residents who live in downtown apartments. The latter has met the most opposition, in part because of what some residents have described as an opaque planning process that deviates from the community’s original vision for the space. The process has been so controversial that it has spurred the creation of multiple online petitions, protests from citizen-led organizations, and at one point threats of a lawsuit from a resident group called Plattsburgh Citizens Coalition.

It has also become a central campaign issue in the mayoral election this year, which has attracted at least six different candidates. The Durkee Street project had a 2022 deadline in early DRI documents. Developers have not yet broken ground.

Saranac Lake’s DRI process, meanwhile, is steadily moving forward — with multiple projects moving through the design phase. Projects include the relocation of the Pendragon Theatre, the creation of the Play ADK children’s museum, the establishment of a downtown shared office center, plus public-sector improvements to several local parks and streets.

The last round of DRI award winners was announced this past April.