The old pawn shop building on East Sixth Street, which has been vacant for several years and cannot feasibly be restored, will be demolished and replaced with a pocket park.
- UPDATE: Sixth Street building demolition begins
- UPDATE: Plans set for new parking lot but Sixth St. pocket park is on hold
The park design will include architectural elements – including bricks and cornices – that will be removed and saved before the demolition.
Those details of the demolition will be covered in a pre-bid meeting with contractors at 9 a.m. March 28, Downtown Renaissance Director Holly Boggess explained during a Local Development Corp. (LDC) meeting Thursday. The bids will be opened April 11.
In December, the LDC purchased the pawnshop building from Graham and Heather Dawson for $23,795. The couple bought the building two years earlier with plans to make it the home of a new restaurant named The Mixer. However, those plans changed because of challenges in restoring the building, and The Mixer is now slated to open later this year across the street in the former Young Hardware building.
A preliminary design for the pocket park includes a pavilion at the center and benches, picnic tables, lighting and landscaping. The design is by landscape architect Lynn Reeves.
This will be the second pocket park downtown. The other, named in honor of the late Fred Atkins, a Hopkinsville councilman, is on Main Street between Ninth and 10th streets. It also replaced a building that would have been too expensive to salvage.
When the park is completed, it will be the last major project in the revival of that block between Main and Virginia streets.
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.
