What does the future of the Winchester Sun building hold? Why not a literary arts center?

The Winchester Sun, or more accu­rate­ly the paper’s own­er Bluegrass News Media, is sell­ing its build­ing. Located imme­di­ate­ly behind the Clark County Courthouse, the Sun’s build­ing has been sym­bol­i­cal­ly and phys­i­cal­ly at the cen­ter of local action for a very long time. 

Since 1924 the news­pa­per has been edit­ed and pub­lished just yards in both direc­tions from the seats of government—city and county—only a few blocks from Leeds Center for the Arts and con­ve­nient­ly locat­ed enough that local mer­chants could stop in to buy adver­tis­ing space. But times have changed — as evi­denced by the fact I found out about the building’s sale first from Facebook instead of in the Sun itself.

So, what might hap­pen next? I sup­pose there are lots of pos­si­bil­i­ties includ­ing that it sits emp­ty for months or years and even­tu­al­ly falls into such dis­re­pair that is falls down or is torn down to becomes green space — or to remain an eye­sore. Of course, it might also be bought local­ly and turned into a restau­rant or oth­er business. 

Yet, there is anoth­er possibility.

How about turn­ing the build­ing into a space for the lit­er­ary arts? In the same way that the Leeds Center for the Arts pro­motes the per­form­ing arts, the Sun build­ing could become a place for pub­li­ca­tion of a lit­er­ary mag­a­zine, class­es in poet­ry, nov­el and essay writ­ing and many more areas of inter­est, tutor­ing, play­writ­ing, con­fer­ences, and pub­lic read­ings by poets and writ­ers — a cen­ter for lit­er­a­cy and learn­ing in the same way that the Carnegie Center serves that func­tion for many in Lexington and near­by communities.

Now is the time to seek a way to help pre­serve the Sun build­ing. In the same way that it was not cheap to save the Leeds, it will not be cheap to save the Sun. It will take mon­ey to buy it, ren­o­vate it — there will need to be meet­ing and con­fer­ence spaces, class­rooms and com­put­er labs.

There will need to be staff and vol­un­teers, reg­u­lar main­te­nance and upkeep. It would seem to be a build­ing that would qual­i­fy to be on the National Register of Historic Places which could lead to fed­er­al and state preser­va­tion grants. Locally, it seems log­i­cal to sug­gest that some local busi­ness­es would sup­port the effort. But it will take coöper­a­tive efforts to help make this come to fruition.

Nothing about the effort will be easy. It will take time, coöper­a­tion between local gov­ern­ments, fund­ing from those sources and per­haps, if the Sun build­ing qual­i­fies as an his­toric place, state and fed­er­al fund­ing. It will be nec­es­sary to find and devel­op long term fund­ing sources from foun­da­tions, non­prof­its, and com­mu­ni­ty supporters.

Our com­mu­ni­ty is deserv­ing of a lit­er­ary space to con­tin­ue the lega­cy of the Winchester Sun. Though they may not stay, Bluegrass News Media seems hap­py to be here. But then again, I nev­er thought that the Lexington Herald-Leader would leave its space at Midland and Main Streets in Lexington either. 

Let’s not let our local news organization’s lega­cy slip away. By find­ing a way to save the build­ing to serve a lit­er­ary future we can give the build­ing new life as a place to devel­op local writ­ers and encour­age the lit­er­ary arts in Winchester and Clark County.