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Morehead officials meet with community members to discuss community grant plans

Anabel Peterman

Another community meeting was held in Morehead recently to present project proposals stemming from the city’s Creating Vibrant Communities Grant. Officials met with community members to discuss plans and share outlines, while taking feedback and comments.

Officials said the grant is designed to allow the city to partner with multiple other entities to increase downtown Morehead’s accessibility, economic draw, and beauty.

Amy Williams, principal and partner at Taylor Siefker Williams Design Group, said after this event, she and other officials will gather all comments and begin revising their strategies.

“So, it starts to talk about who should be leading this. The city should be the big charge behind this plan, and kind of that daily follow-up on various strategies and defining what those tasks are to get everything done. And so within that, we’ll start to look at an overall timeline on what can be done in a more immediate term - which might be next year or the year after - short, mid, and long term,” said Williams.

She said that while it may still be a while until anything begins changing around town, the insight gained from the community is important.

Morehead resident Byron McBrayer was at the forum. He said he’s interested in seeing downtown become more of a community hub.

“I’ve found, viewing Morehead since I moved back two years ago, is that Batson-Oats is a huge draw for bringing people into the area. Beautiful thing that they’ve done there to create a kind of nucleus where people want to come in. So, for me I think that trying to expand that type of venue to bring more people into the area, I think would be a big draw for downtown,” said McBrayer.

McBrayer added that he believes the order in which projects are completed is the most important. He said there is only so much time and money and feels that projects that would bring the most benefit should be done first.

Officials said the goal of the grant is to make downtown a place where people can shop and dine, which is safe and easy to traverse, tells the story of the town through buildings and public spaces, and has a thriving economy.