Story, photo by Steve Nash – Special Contributor to BrownwoodNews.com

The City of Brownwood’s Visitor Center is getting a new home.

Brownwood City Council members approved the purchase Tuesday of the building at 215 Center Ave., across from Pat Coursey Park, for the Visitor Center’s new location. The center is currently located in the Lehnis Railroad Museum.

The $350,000 purchase will be paid by using reserves from the Hotel Occupancy Tax fund.

“The intent of the purchase is to use that as a new visitor center for the City of Brownwood so we can get tourist information out,” Deputy City Manager Ray Tipton said. “This would be staffed by our current visitor center/Lehnis Museum staff, and once we close on it, which will probably in the next month or month and a half, we’ll have a full operations plan and get more information out to the public.”

The building won’t need any immediate renovations, Tipton said.

“We’ll probably go ahead and start using it as is,” Tipton said. “It’s had some renovations recently, so it’s very habitable for now,” he said. “We’ll reassess on the operation side if there’s any additional renovations that we need to make in the future.”

The Visitor Center will move in “as soon as possible after we close on the property,” Tipton said. “So we’ll have to outfit it with some just office furniture and things like that, and then we’ll establish some regular hours. We’ll probably also have special hours in the future based on events.

“We do think it’s a great way to engage visitors in the downtown district and get in front of where visitors already congregate. The building does have restroom facilities, so we will be looping in operations to have public restrooms as part of that facility acquisition.”

In an unrelated real estate matter, council members authorized City Manager Marshal McIntosh to sign a letter of intent for the sale of 10 acres of city property in the Light Industrial Park.

“A prospect has submitted a letter of intent to purchase (the property) for a future project, but I don’t have any other details on it at this time,” Tipton said.