Last year, the audience for Bob Buckhorn's State of the City address melted under a withering sun in Curtis Hixon Park. This year, in uncharacteristically chilly late-March weather, more than 600 people heard the mayor inside the distressed 1929 historic Kress building, a symbol of the potential for redevelopment in downtown. The site was perfect for his inspiration-laden speech, which toward the end sounded like something out of Remember The Titans.
Buckhorn referred to the recent ground breaking ceremony at the old federal courthouse, which is on its way to becoming a hotel and boutique restaurant. The mayor said that next spring the historic building, located a few blocks away on Florida Avenue, "Will come to light. It will be paying taxes, it will anchor this end of the North Franklin Street area, and the Kress building is next."
He said the reason he wanted to hold his address at Kress is because decades ago, the building was the epicenter of a thriving downtown shopping area that also included the old Woolworth's lunch counter, where in 1960, Clarence Fort led the NAACP youth council in a sit-in to be served at the segregated facility.
This article appears in Mar 21-27, 2013.