Have a brick on the Grove Plaza? Learn its fate
August 18, 2014In 1986, thousands of personalized, engraved bricks were sold to help fund the Grove Plaza’s construction.
A year later, the original bricks were replaced with sturdier models and they’ve been a much walked on feature of the plaza ever since.
“Bricks were put down because it’s the most flexible tool we have for the development we thought would occur around the plaza, and sure enough it has,” said Max Clark of the Capital City Development Corporation.
There are some 14,000 engraved bricks here at the Grove with the names of not so famous Idahoans and some very famous Idahoans.
But now, with work on the Gardner Company’s City Centre Plaza, some people wonder about the fate of their very own brick.
Will they be discarded like so much construction debris?
No way, says the CCDC.
There’s a painstaking plan in place.
“So we’ve worked with the Gardner Company and their contractor, to identify and document exactly where every brick was,” said the CCDC’s Clark. “Then they pick it up on a pallet, store them safely until the construction’s done. At the end of the construction phase, brick put back exactly as they were, and the plaza will be finished.”
(Not all the bricks will be moved, just about a third of them.)
In about two years, the engraved bricks will be laid down once again and they say the third time’s the charm.