How Creative Placemaking Transformed a Parking Lot in to a Place of Pride for Middlesboro and Appalachia

Volunteers at our first Levitt AMP Middlesboro work day in May 2015. Credit: DDM.

Over the past three years Middlesboro has gained national recognition for our use of low-cost citizen-led interventions to bring long term change about. These actions fall under the category of “tactical urbanism” and we have experimented with dozens of tactics in Middlesboro. Our pop-up shop the Makers Market helped us secure funding for an entrepreneurship training initiative for Kentucky artisans. Vacant alleys and lots have been turned in to public gathering places through pop-up parks. And now Cumberland Avenue is lined by comfortable chairs painted bright colors made out of shipping pallets.

When the Levitt Pavilions organizations announced their AMP Your City contest last year with grants to winners of $25,000 – we saw our opening. Over a one-month period the public was invited to vote for the top 20 entries. Then Levitt selected the 10 winners. We knew online voting would be a challenge because we were going up against communities of up to 400,000 people. If we survived online voting the only way to win was to submit a competitive proposal that provided what Levitt was looking for: a public space accessible to a range of socioeconomic groups; a programming philosophy that was inclusive, family-friendly and represents a wide range of music genres; and a proven track record of presenting professional quality concerts or community events.

Rendering of our lot from the University of Kentucky Department of Landscape Architecture.

Fortunately we had a vacant gravel lot in the heart of our downtown. The lot briefly served as a farmers market that never took off and most days you’d see cars parked between the market sheds with peeling paint. The University of Kentucky worked with our community on a trail plan that suggested re-purposing this same lot as a public gathering place with a lawn. Since Levitt was looking for a grass-like setting for the concerts we took the designs UK produced for us and entered these in to the contest.

When online voting ended in November we were #11 out of 26 proposals. Now everything hinged on Levitt Pavilions and what they thought about our organization and proposal. Fortunately we were a good fit. We learned ten days before Christmas that Middlesboro was one of 10 winners. We were ecstatic. You couldn’t have given a better present to our community. The Facebook post announcing the win had over 6,192 views, 90 likes, and 58 shares. This is just one measure of the sense of excitement and also proved how powerful our social media following was in helping to make this win happen.

The ten Levitt AMP contest winners.

This was just the start. The hardest work was yet ahead. We needed to raise a dollar-for-dollar match to receive the maximum grant of $25,000. Transforming the gravel lot in to a music venue with a stage and lawn brought many challenges of its own. We were fortunate to have a group of dedicated volunteers to rally around this project and help to bring the vision for free music downtown in to reality. Over 300 people and 64 businesses and organizations participated in this project from the online voting phase through completing work on the lot to make it ready for the concerts. This has by far been the biggest success our community and organization has experienced in getting folks involved.

Perhaps the greatest sign of the need and importance of this project is that every time hope seemed lost or the challenges too great to overcome, a person, business, or group stepped up to provide a critically important piece. Use of the lot and a building on it was donated to us by a generous local resident. John West, an experienced carpenter and owner of the Cumberland Mountain Bed & Breakfast along with his wife Jill – took the lead building the stage. DDM volunteers Shannon Collins and Jeannie Redmond Allen were at nearly every work day providing invaluable support. The sod was donated to us from Agri-sod out of Lexington, shipped to Middlesboro on a flatbed by J.R. Hoe & Sons, and installed with the help of volunteers.  And when the fundraising seemed impossible, dozens of local donors stepped up. The Kentucky Arts Council helped us meet our fundraising goals through awarding an Arts Access Assistance grant of $8,000 to the project.

Now all that is left to do is to hold some concerts. Why not come to Middlesboro one Saturday for the next ten weeks to see the exciting things happening in our town? Concerts start at 7pm on the Levitt AMP Middlesboro Pop-up Park. Bring a lawn chair or blanket, find a spot on our lawn, and enjoy the show.

AUG 01: Jenna & Her Cool Friends
AUG 08: Jimmy Rose and the Jimmy Rose Band
AUG 15: MACH22
AUG 22: Jeni Carr
AUG 29: Lauren Shera
SEP 05: Whiskey Shivers
SEP 12: Appalatin
SEP 19: Annandale
SEP 26: Erica Blinn
OCT 03: J. D. Crowe and The New South "Flashback" Band

In addition to the concerts on August 1 we'll have our first ever Wing Fling - a chicken wing cook off with cash prizes for the winners and a trophy for the fan favorite. An admission fee of $5 gets you in to the Wing Fling and a chance to taste the wings from each of the cooks. Additional wings cost you $1 for 2. The event is from noon-4pm with judging of wings at 4pm. Following that at 6pm will be our popular Ducky Dash where we drop hundreds of rubber ducks in to our canal. If yours is first to cross over the line you have a chance to win $250. Cost to purchase a duck for the race is $5 and ducks can be bought in advance at area businesses or at the event.

Discover Downtown Middlesboro has been awarded an Arts Access Assistance Grant through a program of the Kentucky Arts Council, the state arts agency, which is supported by state tax dollars and federal funding from the National Endowment for the Arts. The Levitt AMP [Your City] Music Series is supported in part by Levitt Pavilions, the national nonprofit behind the largest free outdoor concert series in America. Dedicated to strengthening the social fabric of our communities, Levitt partners with cities to transform neglected public spaces into thriving destinations through the power of free, live music. In 2015, free Levitt concerts will take place in 16 cities across 14 states, all featuring a rich array of music genres and high caliber talent. In addition to Levitt AMP, Levitt forms the only national network of nonprofit outdoor music venues, each presenting 50+ free concerts every year. Learn more about our locations and impact: www.levittpavilions.org.

For questions please visit www.downtownmiddlesboro.org or call (606) 248-6155. We are also on Facebook and Twitter @DDMBoro.

How We Built our Levitt AMP Middlesboro Pop-up Park

We began by chair bombing the downtown with two dozen "Appalachian Chairs," as we call them, painted bright colors.

Here's the lot before we got started working on it. Note the farmers market sheds to the rear. And the platform stage to the right. Everything on the lot would be reused and incorporated in to our plans.

First order of business on the workday was painting the shed on the front of the lot blue.

After the first days work things started looking bright!

We were fortunate to have Kateryna Gonchorova, a Fulbright Scholar from Kiev, Ukraine, visit and put her unique stamp on our project - this making Levitt AMP Middlesboro an international undertaking. Ultimately people from 12 countries visited and participated in making the venue in one form or another.

Here we are as the stage begins to take shape. The section to the rear was from our first Better Block project in 2013. Donna Smith, DDM President, is to the left and Shannon Collins to the right. In the background is John West taking one of the uprights to its spot.

We re-purposed the Farmers' Market sheds and made a roof for the stage out of them.

Here are the sheds with their tops taken off.

Volunteers made quick work out of what remained of the sheds.

In less than a day we went from gravel to grass. From getting the call at 8am that a truck was positioned in Lexington and ready to haul, we had dirt laid and leveled and sod installed by 1:30am the following morning. It was an exhausting 18 hours.

With the shed built, now the dirt comes in.

Thumbs up from the City of Middlesboro Street Department.

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And the sod arrives on a truck, compliments of local company J.R. Hoe & Sons.

Here is all the sod we laid on the first night with the stage in the distance.

And a view of the sod in place from the stage.

The stage and lawn giving new life to the lot. Credit: Cris Ritchie.

View from the stage of our green lawn. Credit: Cris Ritchie.

Now, all that is left to do is for you, your family, and friends to show up for some great live music in downtown Middlesboro. Bring chairs or a blanket and make a day of it. Concerts start every Saturday at 7pm. We hope to see you!