08/11/2026
Just imagine… one day: maybe soon, maybe not-so-soon: Donuts on Main will be open right here on this corner!
And since we promised to share the whole journey with you, that includes the exciting parts AND the parts where we ask a whole lot of questions.
Last Tuesday, we spoke to the City about the possibility of turning the vacant lot beside us into public parking rather than a park/pedestrian plaza.
It appears the grant funding may not allow that change. If that's the case, we understand.
Grants come with rules, and sometimes you simply have to roll with them.
But we still had questions.
The City of Marianna is diligently researching those questions for us, and we appreciate that.
The property is part of the Rebuild Florida Hometown Revitalization Program, Community Development Block Grant–Disaster Recovery (CDBG-DR), FloridaCommerce Agreement M0047, which expires in September 2027.
We've asked:
• How much of the $9,243,842 Agreement M0047 is currently encumbered or allocated specifically to the public facility improvements at 4436 Lafayette Street?
• How much has actually been spent on this particular project to date?
• What grant restrictions prevent the City from reconsidering the final use of the property?
• And if the final use must remain as originally planned, what is the current timeline for completing the project?
We've also been doing a little homework of our own.
In 2023, the City budgeted $300,000 from the grant for demolition of the Pelt building. The actual demolition cost came in considerably under that amount at $189,600.
Then, in June 2024, the City considered and accepted broader Downtown Architectural Style and Design Guidelines that included a proposed pedestrian plaza at Cristo's Corner.
And this is where it became particularly interesting to us as the new occupants of the adjacent restaurant space.
Page 13 of those guidelines lists an “Outdoor Dining Area for Adjacent Restaurant.”
Pages 22 and 24 specifically say:
“Covered outdoor seating for adjacent restaurant.”
And the concept drawings actually designate an area along our building as:
“Covered outdoor seating for adjacent restaurant.”
Obviously, the restaurant occupying our location when those plans were developed and approved is no longer here. They have since relocated to Dothan.
And now… we're here.
The circumstances surrounding this corner have changed significantly since these plans were created.
So we think it's completely reasonable to ask:
What does the plan for Cristo's Corner look like now?
If the grant requires the pedestrian plaza to remain, then let's understand that and figure out how our little corner fits into it.
If there is flexibility because circumstances have changed, we'd love for that conversation to happen too.
Either way, we're going to keep researching, learning, and sharing what we learn with you.
Because someday we're going to look back at this video and say:
“Remember when it was just an empty building, an empty lot, a dream…and a whole lot of paperwork?” 😂
Stay tuned. We're just getting started. AnnMarie Everitt Shelton
XOXOXO Kim