Second Downtown West Public Meeting on August 12

The City of Georgetown will hold a second public meeting on Wednesday, August 12 to confirm community input regarding the Downtown West project. The meeting will be at 5:30 p.m. in the Friends Room at the Georgetown Public Library, 402 W. Eighth Street.

The Downtown West project involves the redevelopment of three existing City buildings. The City has hired the Lawrence Group, an architectural and planning company, to design the redevelopment project based on input from the City and the community.

The first phase of the project includes redeveloping the vacant 1987 former public library building at 808 Martin Luther King, Jr. Street as City Hall, and redeveloping the Georgetown Communication and Technology Building at 510 W. Ninth Street as the Municipal Court building. A second phase involves developing programming and design concepts for the historic Light and Waterworks Building at 809 Martin Luther King, Jr. Street and a proposed green space between Eight and Ninth Streets.

The public meeting in August will be the second step in a two-month programming phase to listen to ideas from the community. The Lawrence Group will present the results of the programming phase to City Council in September.  Schematic design is scheduled to begin in the fall, with construction tentatively scheduled to being next summer.

The Lawrence Group is a St. Louis-based firm with additional offices in Austin, Charlotte, and New York. Past public projects include the Travis County Commissioners Courtroom and the University of Texas at Austin’s Belo Center for New Media, as well as several adaptive reuse projects.

Construction recently started on a paved surface parking lot on Martin Luther King, Jr. Street between Seventh and Eighth streets. The new public lot with 150-spaces replaces a grass and dirt lot. The new paved lot should be complete in early 2016 to provide public and employee parking for the downtown area.

For more information about the Downtown West project contact Jackson Daly at (512) 931-7679 or jackson.daly@georgetown.org.