Rocky Mount’s Downtown Development Manager Tanika Bryant is working with the locally based Buck Leonard Association for Sports and Human Enrichment to find a specific location and an artist to create a mural of Leonard downtown.
That, and discussion of a major fall festival returning downtown this year were among topics that came up at the monthly meeting of the Central City Revitalization Panel earlier this month.
Leonard, who was from Rocky Mount, starred in the baseball leagues comprising African American teams and was inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 1972. He died in 1997 at age 90.
A thoroughfare from Sunset Avenue to U.S. 64 in the western part of the city also is named for Leonard.
Bryant told the revitalization panel at the group’s July 18 meeting that regarding the future mural, questions include whether to have an art call to provide artists with information about the upcoming project and to give them the chance to apply for consideration.
Bryant did make clear that work to have an image of Leonard downtown is in the preliminary stages.
She then told the panel that she is collaborating with the Imperial Centre for the Arts & Sciences, the Station Square business and professional complex, the Rocky Mount Event Center and Braswell Memorial Library to have a fall festival this year.
Bryant said that she sent an e-mail out calling for a collaboration among the larger entities downtown to work together on a festival.
Bryant said that she hopes great ideas can come from a meeting of those downtown entities.
Garland Jones, who serves as the Central City Revitalization Panel’s chairman, asked whether the fall festival would be in conjunction with the yearly fall Eastern Carolina BBQ Throw Down.
Bryant said no but she made clear that she could come back after that upcoming meeting and say that the BBQ Throw Down is going to be part of the festival.
The BBQ Throw Down is held for a significant part of two days in October on the lawn adjacent to the Helen P. Gay Rocky Mount Historic Train Station just off South Church Street.
The BBQ Throw Down is authorized by the Kansas City Barbeque Society and serves as one of the gateways into the nonprofit organization’s larger endorsed contests.
The event, which can be traced to 2008, started as part of what was the Down East Festival.
Jones noted that the downtown area had been the site of a successful and well-attended Down East Festival, with people coming from beyond the Twin Counties area for the event.
“And people looked forward to it year after year after year,” Jones said.
Jones also pointed out that the Down East Festival offered festivalgoers the chance to go to different intersections and listen to either gospel, jazz or rhythm and blues music.
“It was awesome,” he said about the festival.
The Down East Festival started in 1983.
Jones was upbeat about having a large fall festival downtown again, particularly given that revitalization is now occurring or is planned in places around downtown.
“I think now is a good time to try to bring it back because of what’s going on in downtown and the residents in downtown and everything that’s coming back,” he said.
The Central City Revitalization Panel advises about matters regarding preservation and improvements downtown.
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