Former Mayor Brown donates Market Street lot for downtown park
Former Clinton Mayor Cathy Brown stands in front of the Market Street lot she recently bought and donated to the city to create a “pocket park,” which will include a gazebo and live Christmas tree. It will be named Maude W. Brown Park in memory of Brown’s mother. - G. Chambers Williams III
To be called the Maude W. Brown City Park, it will be on a piece of property donated to the city last November by former Mayor Cathy Brown, who stipulated that it can only be used as a park.
The lot has about 35 feet of road frontage on Market Street.
Other stipulations require that the city erect a gazebo on the land, along with a Christmas tree and a walkway made either of brick or concrete stamped to look like brick, Cathy Brown said Monday.
“I bought the property from the heirs of Rachel Southerland on Oct. 28, and I promised I would turn it into a park,” said Brown, who served three terms as Clinton’s mayor in the mid- to late-1980s.
“I didn’t want to restrict it too much, because I wanted it to be city property for use by the people,” she said. “But I thought it was important to name it for my mom. She loved the gazebo across the street in the Hoskins-Lane Park, which has now been moved down to the fairgrounds park area.
“I’m also grateful to the Hoskins and Lane families that let the property across the street be used as a park for years.”
