A pair of adjoining vacant lots downtown— one fronting Sixth Street and the other fronting Fifth Street — will be developed as one public parking lot with lights and landscaping at an estimated cost of $137,500.
(Photo by Jennifer P. Brown)
Planning officials outlined the project Tuesday afternoon for members of the Hopkinsville-Christian County Landbank Authority, which owns the smaller of the two lots at Fifth and Virginia streets. The other lot, at Sixth and Virginia, is the property of the Local Development Corp.
Drivers will be able to access the parking lot from South Virginia or Fifth Street, Steve Bourne, executive director of Community and Development Services, explained.
The lot will have 27 parking spaces. It’s expected that the lot will be used mainly by patrons of the Sixth Street retail and restaurant hub, the Alhambra Theatre and Hopkinsville Brewing Co. Employees of downtown businesses will be asked to not use the parking lot.
The Landbank Authority and the Local Development Corp. are both public agencies involved in downtown improvement projects, and their boards receive staff support and planning services from CDS.
But the two agencies have different statutory obligations. For that reason, the Landbank Authority must accept bids on its lot. At Tuesday’s meeting, the board authorized the process to advertise for bids.
Bidders would be required to pay at least the cost of the parking lot design and construction, which is more than $40,000, and the purchase will include deed restrictions. The buyer would be required to maintain the lot for parking and agree to an easement joining the two lots.
Bourne and Holly Boggess, director of the Downtown Renaissance program, acknowledged that the Local Development Corp. will be bidding on the Landbank Authority’s lot.
The seemingly complicated process to join two lots owned by separate public agencies is probably not a key concern of the general public, Mayor Carter Hendricks said.
“They want to see the parking lots completed,” he said.
Meanwhile, another improvement on Sixth Street is on hold, Bourne and Boggess said after the meeting.
For now, the pocket park is on hold.
It had been planned on the lot where the former pawn shop building was demolished last month.
The Local Development Corp. purchased the property several months ago when the previous owners discovered it was not feasible to restore the building. At the agency’s March board meeting, Boggess described plans for a landscaped pocket park with seating and a small pavilion.
However, there is not a consensus of the business owners on Sixth Street to proceed with the pocket park, Boggess said.
Some downtown stakeholders believe the park could attract loitering and vagrancy, and that concern stems at least in part from an increase in the number of apparent unemployed and perhaps homeless people who spend their days downtown.
Jennifer P. Brown is co-founder, publisher and editor of Hoptown Chronicle. You can reach her at editor@hoptownchronicle.org. She spent 30 years as a reporter and editor at the Kentucky New Era. She is a co-chair of the national advisory board to the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues, governing board president for the Kentucky Historical Society, and co-founder of the Kentucky Open Government Coalition.
