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150 151 version of a former K-Mart building and grocery store into a new convention space called The Venue at Coosa Landing. “The construction started in January and is scheduled to be completed by late July,” reports Shane Ellison, Assistant to Mayor Sherman Guyton. “It was about a $12.5 mil- lion project. The K-Mart, itself, comprises 90,000 square feet.We demolished about 40,000 square feet of that in order to pro- vide for more parking.We retained 50,000, which is being converted into the conven- tion facility and then there’s an additional 20,0000 square feet attached to it, that was formerly a grocery store, that is being retained and spruced up for future com- mercial development or future public use.” “The beautiful thing about that property is it’s almost immediately adjacent to the Coosa River, which flows through the heart of our town,” Ellison continues. “There is a four-acre green space that the City of Gadsden owns and then just east of that GADSDEN, ALABAMA is the new convention site. So, we are hopeful that the convention space will be the catalyst to develop the four acres on the river.” The city also recently reconstructed Airport Road which connects the city to the airport. “We went from a two-lane, tar and gravel road to a four-lane, major highway,” Ellison notes. “And that also included major water and sewer upgrades to service the several hundred acres that we have available at our airport industrial park. So, we are ready to go. “While our Goodyear plant is closer to the downtown core, a lot of the Tier Two and Tier Three auto suppliers are at the airport industrial complex,” adds Eric Wright, Public Affairs Coordi- nator for the city. “So, they’re all connected to that upgraded infrastructure and road. It’s a corridor that we can use to attract more industry.” Meanwhile, Ellison says that downtown Gads- den, an area about three blocks wide and seven blocks long, is almost fully developed, with a business occupancy rate of over 90 percent. “We have one of the nicest and most prosperous downtowns in the state,” he declares. “Downtown Gadsden, Inc. (a nonprofit community partnership dedicated to fostering the economic develop- ment of downtown) is often cited as the highest functioning organization in the state as far as the Main Street Alabama program goes. In addition, there are probably upwards of 20 lofts downtown, and 75 percent of them have been developed in the last three years, so there’s not a whole lot of opportunity for redevelopment there, other than to support the existing businesses.” Nonetheless, Ellison reports that, just this past