In the fall of 2017, two Confederate monuments were removed from the old Fayette County Courthouse and Cheapside—the site of one of the most prominent African American slave auction blocks in the United States. This act, while necessary, surfaced deeply entrenched tensions and unresolved histories within the community. Against this backdrop, Jay Pitter Placemaking was invited to lead a process that would establish common ground, honour the site’s painful history, and chart a pathway toward a more just and harmonious future.

With a five-year moratorium placed on any new design interventions, the work focused on public education, community engagement, and the establishment of placemaking principles to guide the site’s future. Central to this process was the understanding that public joy is not the opposite of pain, but a practice of reckoning and renewal—a way to hold complexity while creating conditions for collective healing and shared possibility.

The project included a comprehensive site audit and policy review, followed by an extensive placemaking SWOT and community asset-mapping process that extended beyond Cheapside to other historically significant sites across Lexington. In collaboration with a wide range of stakeholders, the practice designed communications, media, and public education strategies to support informed, constructive dialogue and delivered equitable placemaking capacity-building sessions for client partners and local institutions. More than 20 public engagements were convened, including a children’s design charrette (in partnership with Downtown Lexington Partnership and the Lexington Public Library), neighbourhood walks, shared meals and idea exchanges, and a televised Witnessing Circle—each designed to transform a site of trauma into a space of learning, connection, and joyful public life.

The project’s success catalyzed further community-building work: Jay Pitter Placemaking was immediately contracted to lead a city-wide series of courageous On the Table conversations—a three-day event that brought together more than 5,000 stakeholders across multiple public spaces to envision the future of Lexington together. This project was also part of a submission that received the Creating a Healthy City for All Design Award (2019), recognizing its innovative approach to transforming a contested site into a foundation for inclusive and joyful placekeeping.

By embedding public joy into a process of historical reckoning and spatial transformation, (Re)Imagining Cheapside demonstrates how even the most fraught spaces can become sites of shared memory, accountability, and collective possibility—places where new civic futures can be imagined together.