CUMMINGTON — Rural towns are analogous to Ginger Rogers trying to keep up with Fred Astaire.

“Ginger said she had to do everything Fred Astaire did, but backwards and in heels” — much like the state’s rural towns that are often grasping for infrastructure and maintenance resources while doing everything that bigger towns do, Lt. Gov. Kim Driscoll told a crowd of officials in Cummington late last week.

Driscoll stopped at the small hilltown on Friday to announce $10 million in grants for 49 rural communities through the state’s Community One Stop for Growth’s Rural Development Fund grant program, part of the Healey-Driscoll administration’s efforts toward “geographic equity,” she said.

Cummington and Plainfield are two communities to benefit during this round of funding, securing nearly $1 million  for projects in their respective communities.

Cummington will receive $400,000 toward the ongoing transformation of the former Berkshire Trail Elementary School — an $8.6 million project that brought Driscoll and her posse to the Cummington Community House, where she said the funds will prove to be “transformational.” Plainfield’s $450,000 grant will go to repair drainage issues, reclaim existing pavements, and replace pavement for a more than 1.5-mile stretch of West Street.

Other regional communities to receive grants include Belchertown, which secured $215,000 to renovate the 32,350-square-foot Tadgell School for reuse as commercial space; Deerfield, which received $100,000 to upgrade the Deerfield-Whately Road and its wastewater connections; and Whately, which landed $75,000 to develop a new comprehensive plan.

Driscoll and Yvonne Hao, the state’s secretary for economic development, were joined at the former school on Main Street in Cummington by state legislators Sen. Paul Mark, Rep. Lindsay Sabadosa and more than a dozen town residents to formally accept the grant.

“Our town is again presented with a chance to reimagine and repurpose the 22,000-square-foot building,” said Brian Gilman of the Select Board, speaking about the planned redevelopment of the old school.

The 75-year-old building, formerly the Cummington School that served the whole town, closed in 2015, but the town agreed to keep life in the space.

“Collectively, our community wanted to keep the building for the town as a space to house local government, a food incubator, recreational facilities, the children’s library, working space and a commercial rental space,” said Gilman, explaining that the updates will provide a central location for essential resources, including a space for the Council on Aging, as well as the Hilltown CDC that will utilize the community kitchen.

The project initially had been pegged at just more than $5 million, but has gone up predominantly due to higher costs of building materials.

The state funding, town officials have said, may go toward construction documents, hiring a project manager, and engineering assessments. The building, although solid and updated with a roof in 2016, needs updates to its heating and cooling system, as well as a sprinkler system and other infrastructure updates.

The Hilltown CDC, which is funding the restoration of the kitchen in the space, has worked to have that space revived as soon as this year, but it is unsure if this will happen. The project as a whole will not be completed until additional funding can be found.

Several residents who attended Friday’s announcement said they were excited to see the possibility of more updates to the space, including James Martin, who was part of the first graduating class from the school in 1952. He said this money is vital because without using the space, the building is just “a burden for your taxpayers,” as the town has invested $40,000 annually for a decade simply to keep the building maintained.

Cummington’s Council on Aging Coordinator Chrisoula Roumeliotis said “this whole thing is just really exciting.” She is eager for the Council on Aging to have a niche in the updated space.

“In hindsight, this should have felt like a daunting task for a small town of 800 people with a very part time, mostly volunteer local government,” Gilman said. “But the Select Board at the time boldly moved forward with keeping activity in the building for a variety of purposes.”

After the school’s closing due to declining enrollment, those purposes included a space for local groups and co-ops to gather, as well as housing the town’s fiber-optic network. In 2019, the town came to a consensus through an ad hoc committee that residents did not want to part ways with the brick building, and what for many has for a generation been a center of community life.

“The next time you pass this way, you might not recognize it, because of all the new life that has been breathed into it,” said Gilman.

The grant, through the state’s One Stop Growth, was highly competitive, with about 5,000 applications reviewed for funding through the Rural Development Fund, which was included a $4 billion economic development bill, called the Mass Leads Act, signed by the governor last fall.