Jonesboro, AR — (JonesboroRightNow.com) — May 13, 2025 — The Main Street entrance to downtown Jonesboro officially reopened following a brief ribbon-cutting ceremony on Tuesday afternoon.
Jonesboro Mayor Harold Copenhaver was met with cheers and applause and noted dedication and teamwork during the demolition of the former Citizens Bank building.
“It was an iconic feature in our community, but now, with the community support and the unfortunate deterioration over the past two decades, it was time for it to come down. I’m proud of this administration, I’m proud of our City Council, I’m proud of Nabholz, all of us working together and the downtown businesses because this was a stress on them, but more importantly now this is a viable part of our community moving forward and that’s what I’m looking forward to,” Copenhaver said.
Downtown business owners said they were excited about the completed demolition and reopening of the roads. Washington Avenue, the other road closed during the project, reopened to traffic Friday afternoon.
John Easley, owner of Associated Engineering, said he felt the building’s demolition was a great improvement to the area.
“I’ve been here all my life and seen the bank and the deterioration and all that,” Easley said. “It’s sad to see it go, but I’m glad it’s been improved like this. Look forward to seeing what goes here eventually down the road. It’s a big change from what it was 20-30 years ago.”
George and Denise Gotcher, owners of Georgeous Custom Jewelry Designs, said they were thankful to the city for getting it done so quickly.
“It’s a month ahead of time, so we’re more excited for that too because the costs were down,” Denise Gotcher said. “The first few months to the end of the year it affected us a lot. We were down from the year before for November and December, then January, when people finally realized they could go around, when Monroe switched to Main. We were finally telling our clients, Church to Huntington to Union, you come around and most of our clients finally got it.”
She added that after clients learned about the alternate traffic patterns, business picked up, however, some clients were still waiting for roads to reopen before picking up their orders.
“We’re more excited that our clients are going to come in and pick up jobs that they’ve had here for five or six months,” she said.
Parts of Main Street have been shut down since Sept. 25, 2024, when a bulge was noticed on the side of the seven-story building. The City Council voted in January to approve the demolition project through Nabholz Construction and demolition began on March 10.