The Paris Downtown Association (PDA) has donated the proceeds of the recent 4th Annual Paris Antique Fair to Paris Texas Main Street bringing its public restroom project $8,000 closer to reality.
The restroom project ties into the $800,000 First United Methodist park project announced earlier this year. While the Methodist Church has secured pledges to build the park across from the church, the public restrooms that would support it would be funded, built and maintained by the City of Paris through Main Street if donations could cover the initial construction estimated at $45,000.
Public restrooms have been of particular interest to the downtown merchants who often lack appropriate facilities for public use or have safety concerns. Sulphur Springs’ attractive and successful public restrooms in their thriving downtown have demonstrated that this project can be accomplished in a very beneficial way.
Donations have come from individuals, grants, and multiple fundraisers include Main Street’s 6’d event and now the Paris Antique Fair, bringing the total funds raise to about $35,000.
The Antique Fair, now in its fourth year, was relocated from the Lamar County Fair Grounds to its new home in the Gibraltar Hotel downtown this year. The event was originally conceived and put on by Janet and Keith Green. Janet owned a local antique store and wanted to bring an antique fair to Paris. “Initially we had 65 vendors, which grew by the third year to over 85 vendors.” But an opportunity arose to buy out Randy Radar and rebrand Gene the Jeweler as her new endeavor Carriage House. This meant that Janet needed to focus her attention on her new business rather than the Antique Fair.
“A lady approached me about taking over the event and moving it to another town,” Green told eParisExtra.com, “but I wanted it to remain here and continue to bring people to Paris.” So Green offered the event to Paris Downtown Association. PDA tentatively agreed provided the event could be relocated to downtown. The Gibraltar turned out to be a perfect fit thanks to the generosity of its owners Suzy and Chip Harper. “We’ve already had people sign up for multiple booth spaces for 2015,” Green noted about the success of the new location.
With a lot of active leadership from PDA members from Green, Robin Weemes, Kari Daniel, Melissa Gordon, Melissa Wickersham and many, many volunteers, the event was a great success enabling PDA to donate $8,000 to Main Street to support the downtown public restrooms.
“Providing public restrooms in downtown Paris has been a goal of the Paris Main Street Advisory Board for several years. I am so pleased that with the efforts of both Main Street and PDA we are very close to reaching our goal of $45,000,” said Jill Drake, Chair of the Main Street Advisory Board.
“A lot of behind the scenes work went into this donation. Main Street is very grateful to the Paris Downtown Association for their donation and for bringing a wonderful event like the Paris, Texas Antique Fair into downtown’” added Cheri Bedford, Paris Main Street Coordinator.