Lavonia Re-Opens Downtown Saturday

By MJ Kneiser, WLHR

It’s going to be a time to celebrate in downtown Lavonia Saturday when the City of Lavonia holds a grand re-opening of their businesses and restaurants.

The Lavonia Downtown Development Authority has been planning the major re-opening celebration of businesses in the downtown area for over a month.

Originally, the weekend was to have kicked off with the first Music on Main concert at the Gazebo Friday night, but Lavonia DDA Director Vivian Young said that had to be canceled.

“Because of Governor Kemp’s directive to continue to ban live performances and concerts, we had to cancel the first Music on Main concert,” she said.

Still, Young said the grand re-opening this Saturday will happen.

“We’re going ahead with our Saturday re-opening,” Young said. “We will have an art walk at the Gazebo, the restaurants will be open. A lot of the businesses will have sidewalk sales and of course, the farmers will be here for their Saturday Farmers Market. And Philip at Grogran St. Auction will do antique appraisals, like an antique roadshow.”

As part of the preparation for the grand re-opening, the DDA has been awarding gift certificates to downtown businesses through a trivia contest on 92.1 WLHR.

In early May, Young told the Lavonia City Council about a plan to take funds from their facade grant fund and use the money to offer small grants to downtown businesses.

“What we’re going to is divert those funds into some small grants that each business can take advantage of,” she said last month. “And they can do some upkeep on their facades or use the money to purchase cleaning and sanitizing items. We’re going to have packets and applications that we’re going to give out to all the downtown businesses. They can fill them out and give them back to us.”

Young said there was about $8,000 in the facade grant fund leftover from last year and this year that no one ever applied for, which works out to about $300 per business downtown.

Anyone with questions about the Grand Re-opening can contact Young at 706-356-1926.