Construction on downtown Corbin parking lot beautification project to begin Thursday

A large municipal public parking lot that runs along Depot Street in Corbin, between Gordon and Monroe Streets, will be closed for at least the next month while the area is totally renovated as part of a experimental downtown beautification project.

Beginning Thursday, the city will shut down the lot to all parking. Corbin main Street Manager Andy Salmons said workers will be marking off the lot, and construction is set to begin by the town’s Public Works Department either Friday or Monday.

“They want to hit the ground running,” Salmons said. “It’s really a beautiful plan. What they’ve done is taken a very minimalist, unfriendly space and they’ve turned it into something rather beautiful and inviting. That’s really what we want if we are expecting a lot of people to come into the downtown, is to find a place where they feel safe leaving their cars … that they feel safe walking to and from.”

When complete, officials are hoping the lot is transformed from a drab parking area to a verdant, attractive space. It’s the opening salvo in a plan to beautify the downtown area by upgrading and repurposing spaces into more lively areas.

The plan is to ring the lot with trees, shrubs, and flowers. Planters will be placed around. Sinking and collapsing areas in the lot will be fixed. There will be a large rain garden filled with plants. And some areas will have ornamental, water-permeable pavers that allow water to seep into the underlying soil instead of simply running off into the storm sewer system.

“They’ve got a lot of features built into this design that will mitigate the traditional problems with runoff,” Salmons said. “These are ideas that big cities like Louisville and Lexington are just now doing and we are doing it in Corbin as well.”

Construction will be completed by December. Salmons said landscaping work would be done early next Spring.

The cost of the project was projected to be about $200,000 if bid out to a private contractor, but since the project is being undertaken by the city workers, it will be much less.

Salmons said the idea is to replicate the plans for this particular lot as a way to improve the looks of municipal parking areas that line Depot Street. The end result, he said, should be a fairly significant, eye-catching change to downtown Corbin that will help serve as a training ground as well for city workers to learn how to execute the concepts in other construction around the city.

Also, as part of the project, Monroe Street between Depot and Main Streets will be closed to vehicle traffic and will become a pedestrian area that will contain a prototype “pocket park” to serve as a gathering area.