Improvements coming to Cairo's downtown

Payton Fletcher, Thomasville Times-Enterprise, Ga.
·2 min read

Jul. 26—Julian Brown, the city manager of Cairo, said that improvements were coming to the city and its downtown.

Brown said that new businesses in the area, pointing to two new restaurants, Punky's and Gate 16 Cafe, have already begun to have a positive impact in the downtown area of the city.

"Both of those have boosted downtown," Brown said, "and there's more to come with downtown."

The Zebulon Theater, he mentioned, has undergone a significant change in the past year, opening up its stage to more live concerts.

"Our Zebulon Theatre has seen a big change in the last year," he said. "The change being that it's gone to a lot of live concerts there."

The live concerts, according to the city manager, have brought increased attention from Bainbridge and Decatur County as a whole.

"There's something about bringing those live performances that's really changed" Brown said. "And that's from the live performances you see a lot of traffic from Bainbridge and Decatur County in particular."

Brown also pointed to the next exhibit of the local Grady County Museum and History Center, which focuses on the history of trains in Cairo and the local area.

"Whether you're excited about trains or you're not, when you go in there it's really amazing," he said. "It's great to see history, real history, that you can almost touch, obviously don't physically touch it, but you can see how the trains went through Cairo, Whigam, and they actually, it's not made up, it's the real train routes."

Downtown, Brown said, would be made even more complete when the Old Cairo depot was finished with renovations and it's new operators, local pizza restaurant Home Slice, soon to be rebranded First & Broad Pizza Company, took over.

"Really, once that Depot is built, this strip, this North Broad strip to the Depot is really gonna be special from the Zebulon to it," Brown said. "I'm excited about the ideas of field trips there."

Lastly, Brown mentioned that Cairo's Southern Terrace Park was currently in the middle of improvement, involving new basketball courts, a paved track and a wholly new pavilion.

"They've made a lot of improvements, it's not 100% finished yet, but they're is half a mile paved track, as well as basketball courts and a new pavilion. It looks great," he said. "It's not open yet, so it's not finished, but it's going to be really great."