The portable toilets at downtown events in Spencer Park may soon be a thing of the past.
The Commerce Downtown Development Authority will receive a $70,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture to build a “business information center” in its Pine Street property across the street from the park.
In the end, the idea is to have handicap accessible restrooms, a kitchen, meeting room, storage and a welcome center that would have “a museumish” quality, with a “wall of history” detailing Commerce’s evolution from Harmony Grove, through the railroad boom, through the textile era to the present, according to Craver.
The project is estimated at $130,000. With the grant and two budget years’ worth of capital funding at $20,000 a year, and the DDA is close to having all the money. Craver said he has applied to the Georgia Department of Economic Development for a $10,000 Tourism Product Development Grant.
He hopes the project can be completed by the end of the year.
