The corner at 601 Main St. wasn’t much to look at not that long ago. It had been a detail shop and before that, a service station.
On Sunday night, it was used as the perfect gathering place for those wanting to drink hot chocolate, listen to Christmas music being played and performed and watch as the city’s Christmas tree was illuminated.
The journey from grease rag to deck the halls is illuminating, as well.
Having a public space in downtown Pine Bluff had been on the city’s wish list since 2009 because it was thought, correctly, the city needed an outdoor area for art and meeting up with friends and even for seating for a possible restaurant nearby.
The location of the old filling station couldn’t have been better, except for one problem: it was polluted with petrochemical residue that had leached into the soil. Consequently, the area was deemed a “Brownfield site” by the federal Environmental Protection Agency, meaning its use or development would be difficult by the presence of those contaminants.
Independent reporting for Pine Bluff & Jefferson County since 1879.
All was not lost, but it did take a lot of money to put things right.
The first key to moving beyond the problem was that the city, which had taken possession of the site, was able to get a $200,000 Brownfield Assessment Program grant from the EPA to assess the amount of contamination at the site. Five years later, in 2014, the city received an additional $200,000 EPA Brownfield Cleanup grant to go toward the $467,000 cost of cleaning up the contamination and the construction of the plaza, according to a newspaper article last year.
And finally the plaza puzzle was put together when the tab for the remainder of the needed money was picked up by Go Forward Pine Bluff, an agency that is responsible for making a lot of wheels turn these days.
Stated the news story: “Currently, the 13,000-square-foot plaza includes two landscape beds for decorative plants bordered with low, wide walls that will provide casual seating. Along the eastern edge of the plaza is a raised stage area with a curved backdrop that will accommodate public programs and events.”
Now, the plaza is something to behold.
Standing in the middle of the plaza now, as we noted, is a 20-foot Christmas tree. On Sunday night, when it was lit, somewhere between an estimated 200 and 300 people were comfortably congregating on the site, with some sitting here and there at one of the many tables.
“Ten years ago, 601 Main Street was a detail shop and before that a gas station,” Mayor Shirley Washington was quoted in the story as saying during the plaza’s dedication held in May 2019. “It sat underutilized in the heart of our downtown. This plaza will serve as a place where our community will gather for celebrations and events. …”
And that’s exactly how it was being used Sunday night.
The cost of getting it to the place where it is today was high, but the benefits of having pleasant open spaces in a city is also high, even if all you might ever do there is have a sandwich and read a book — a book that you might have checked out from the new library right across the street.
It’s impossible to drive past the plaza without thinking, oh, how nice, which is the same sentiment that people could someday have about the whole of Pine Bluff. Little by little, the city is getting there, even if it sometimes takes a decade to make progress happen.