Plans are moving forward for another downtown gathering place.
The Citywide Development Corporation’s bid of $500 for a vacant lot off East Washington Street was accepted at Thursday’s city council meeting. The lot is next to Butz Flowers.
“That parcel of land is part of a bigger project to look at vacant properties and vacant buildings and reuse and redevelop and repurpose to be something better than what they are,” said Angie Urban, CDC board member and director of New Visions for Lawrence County. “At that lot, we are looking at doing is purchasing that property out of the repository.”
The vacant lot approved for sale Thursday is one of four parcels on that bigger plot of land. One is privately owned and Urban said city solicitor Ted Saad is working with that owner on the deed to turn it over to the city. When all the lots are purchased and under CDC control, the bigger plan is for a community gathering place.
“Ultimately, we’re looking at a working with a private businessperson who purchased the caboose over at the Human Services Center lot where they’re putting in the new boat launch,” Urban said. “The idea is to move the caboose over to this lot and create a plaza for gathering and the caboose would be retrofitted so you could serve food and beverages out of it or have entrepreneurs be able to experiment with retail products and kickstart their businesses in physical locations.”
Council also approved Conner Biggs as a full-time city police officer and $24,599 for two mowers for the public works department.
Council’s caucus and voting meetings scheduled for Aug. 23 and 25 are canceled. The next time the council will meet is Sept. 6.
