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Old Historic Bus Station Could Become New Public Market

A grass roots non-profit in Lexington lands a grant worth more than a half a-million dollars to help turn an abandoned bus station into a local market.

The North Limestone Community Development Corporation scored $550,000 from the John S. and James L Knight Foundation to help them turn the old Greyhound bus line hub at Loudon Avenue and North Limestone into a community market that carries food and products. 

NLCDC Director Richard Young told us the vision is to design a public market focused on creating neighborhood businesses.  “Some of the funding from this grant, we’re actually going to have the funds to supply start up grants to people who have lived in the neighborhood for a certain amount of time and then we can coax then through some business training, financial literacy training, marketing training, all the things you would need to be a successful business owner.  We would then give them a free space in the market for a year so that they can get their business launched.”  The hope is that those businesses would then move out into the community so that new upstarts could take a spot in the market.

LexTran currently owns the building and Young said they are willing to sell it for the project but the amount needed to make the purchase and renovate the space is still up in the air.  It’s estimated it will take several million dollars to complete.  Young believes the Knight Foundation Grant will spur other investors and sponsors to support the enterprise which would be called the North Side Common Market.