Photograph of the new archway renderings made available by the City of Lima.
Photo courtesy of City of Lima
LIMA — The City of Lima unveiled a new gift on Wednesday given to the city by John Heaphy. The owner of the Good Food Restaurants donated a new archway that will be located on Main Street in downtown Lima next to the building Heaphy is redeveloping.
Heaphy said he purchased buildings in downtown Lima during the COVID-19 pandemic. He has since worked on reconstructing the establishments to encourage new development within the city.
”My vision was always to try and spur some development in the southeast quadrant of downtown,” said Heaphy. “The city buildings department has been fabulous to work with. We just think it is an exciting time in downtown Lima — not only for our project, but for other things that are happening. It truly is a fact that development synergy spurs other interests in other people wanting to do things to their buildings.”
Heaphy also said the road will have brand new landscaping and ‘festival lighting’.
The gift was approved at Monday evening’s Lima Council meeting. Mayor Sharetta Smith weighed in on the project at Wednesday’s press conference, stating “the community does not move if we don’t all work together.”
“Government has to work with the private sector and the private sector has to also work with the citizens,” said Smith. “Particularly, in this day and age where we know because of the internet people can choose to live anywhere in Ohio and work in Wisconsin, for example. When we look at economic development, a huge piece of that is community development.”
Smith also said over the course of the next several years there will have been around $12 million of investments in the ‘streetscape’ of the city.
“Proper infrastructure makes entrepreneurs and business owners like John want to come and invest in our community,” said Smith.
According to Lima city engineer Ian Kohli, the goal is to have the archway near completion around the time of the opening of the new Greater Lima Region Park Amphitheater. Kohli said the road will be blocked off for food trucks when events take place at the amphitheater.
“The amphitheater has announced its opening weekend starting August 2,” said Kohi. “We hope that the majority of that (streetscape) is going to be done through the week. There still may be some construction during the grand opening. We have started putting in the foundations (of the arch) so hopefully that will be going in soon, by this fall we’ll have everything in place.”
Reach Precious Grundy at 567-242-0351.
