Topic: Bump City

Festive ceremony opens Strawberry Alley

By Christine Anne Piesyk | August 31, 2008 |

Hundreds of Clarksville residents converged downtown Friday for the festive dedication of the city’s newest development project: Strawberry Alley.

Mayor Piper wields the scissors, cutting the red ribbon to officially open the rebuilt "Strawberry Alley"

The project has tied up traffic, rerouted buses, and clogged streets for several months during the redesign, which included new, wider sidewalks with brick pavers, new plantings, a vintage style clock, and angled parking. The original lighting plan, which was overkill and required the wearing of sunglasses at night when it was first lit, was tampered down, with a number of the new lighting fixtures removes at the 11th hour and re-installed on a section of North Second Street. It was a wise decision, and did a lot to balance the appearance of the street. The much-discussed $100,000 custom  fountain is scheduled to be installed in November, in time for the holiday season.

Strawberry Alley is the westerly portion of the former Legion Street. Officials took the portion of Legion Street from City Hall to North Second Street, renaming it after the wife of former Clarksville Mayor James Elder, whose strawberry patch at that location was paved over as the city expanded. «Read the rest of this article»

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Legion Street, new “Strawberry Alley” to reopen in formal ceremony

By Christine Anne Piesyk | August 23, 2008 |

The City of Clarksville will host a grand-reopening of Legion Street and the new ‘Strawberry Alley’ on August 29th from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. The street will formally re-open less one of its new attractions: a unique $102,734 fountain. Lest you think the addition of the fountain has been discarded, think again: the custom made fountain will be installed in November.

This photo of the new "Strawberry Alley" only hints at the true glaring brightness of the new lightning on this reconstructed downtown street.

The $1.2 million price tag in the contract for the Legion Street/Strawberry Alley work included $75,000 for a fountain, $27,000 short of this one-of-a-kind fountain’s actual cost. The difference in the fountain cost plus installation expenses will be made up from a $250,000 “contigency line item” in the contract with Roy T. Goodwin. The original designated maximum price allocated for the fountain has fallen by the wayside. «Read the rest of this article»

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