A city-owned parking lot behind the Graham Historical Museum is apparently the key to the city’s latest proposal to relocate Sesquicentennial Park.
Since January, Graham’s city council has bandied around a range of ideas for this pocket park, which was built in 2001 at the north entrance to Court Square to mark Alamance County’s 150th anniversary in 1999.
Although billed as “a lasting gift to the citizens of Alamance County,” the park’s long-term survival was thrown into doubt with the discovery that the foundation for its decorative brickwork had started to sink. The council went on to solicit bids to correct the subsidence but ultimately ruled out the option on account of the cost. In the meantime, its members began to consider options for dismantling and, potentially, relocating the park.
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The council took the first step toward the park’s relocation in May when its members voted 4-to-1 to rescue the park’s pergola, its pole-mounted clock, and the inscribed “memorial” bricks that area residents had purchased to fund its development.
The council went on to decree that the city should “do whatever’s necessary” to make the property safe before selling it or repurposing the site.
At the time that the council made this decision, its members had no real clarity about where the pergola and the other salvageable items might ultimately go. One possible location for these keepsakes emerged only this week when the city published a notice in The Alamance News that it would hold a hearing about one possible site for the park’s relocation.
According to this notice, the plan up for consideration would move the park to “a portion” of a city-owned parking lot behind the Graham Historical Museum, which is itself located at 135 West Elm Street.
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Anyone who would like to weigh in on this proposal will have an opportunity to address the council during a public hearing on Tuesday, September 9. The hearing will take place during a regularly-scheduled council meeting that’s scheduled to begin at 6:00 p.m. in Graham’s municipal building at 201 South Main Street.
