OBSERVER Photo by M.J. Stafford Funding is in place for a cleanup at the site of the former Niagara Motors in Dunkirk.

A cleanup at the former Niagara Motors site in the city of Dunkirk can go ahead, after the city landed a $59,794 grant to fully fund the work.

Dunkirk already received 90% of the money for the site work in a 2019 New York Department of Environmental Conservation grant. However, 10% had to come from local sources. City officials announced Tuesday that National Grid is offering that amount through a brownfield redevelopment program.

Workers will scrape off the contaminated top level of soil and cap it with a new layer of dirt.

“It’ll be cleaned up to a certain level of cleaning of the contamination,” said Vince DeJoy, city planning and development director. “It doesn’t mean it’s probably going to be cleaned up to the point you could have residential.”

City officials offered a round of applause recently when DeJoy announced at a Common Council workshop that local taxpayers won’t have to pay anything for the work.

DeJoy and other planners are eyeing the site for industrial redevelopment. Its historic address is 760 Lamphere Street; it’s next to the railroad tracks on Route 60 and borders Ice Cream Drive.

The site is right on the city border with the town of Dunkirk.

According to a DEC remediation plan issued in 2010, the site was used “for various industrial purposes from at least 1919 through the 1970s. Operations ceased in the 1970s and the on-site industrial building was abandoned approximately 10 years later. As a result, the building fell into disrepair and was demolished in the year 2000. The site has been vacant since that time.”

There was no time frame given for the upcoming project.