EVANSVILLE, Ind. (AP) - Historic preservationists are seeking ideas for how best to re-use a former Greyhound bus station in downtown Evansville.
The statewide preservation group Indiana Landmarks took over the station from the city last year and is planning a May 10 open house for suggestions on the art-deco style building. It has a blue facade, dates to the 1930s and closed in 2007.
“We want people in the building, and we want the building to be part of the community,” Stewart Sebree, the group’s southwestern Indiana field office director, told the Evansville Courier & Press (https://bit.ly/1u6tqeO ).
Partitions that divided the building’s space and wooden panels that covered the station’s windows have been removed.
Sebree said that in the station’s heyday it included a ticket counter and waiting area, a telephone bank, a shoe shine, a cigar stand, a men’s lounge with showers and an upstairs women’s lounge with a bathtub.
A restaurant is one possibility for the building, and some preliminary talks have taken place with potential occupants, he said. A restaurant could complement the farmers market that’s held on an adjacent lot during the summer months.
Bids are being sought from contractors to do exterior work and a fundraising effort will be starting soon, Indiana Landmarks President Marsh Davis said.
“One way or the other, we’ll go at it full force,” he said. “Early May is going to be a turning point for the project. As with a lot of restoration projects, the building will get uglier before it gets pretty.”
Davis said one purpose of the open house is to let people know that work is starting on the building’s restoration.
“Whatever happens there, we want it to contribute to the economic vitality of downtown Evansville,” he said. “That’s kind of a key thing.”
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Information from: Evansville Courier & Press, https://www.courierpress.com
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