Crossties officially opens | Downtown venue gets credit for being ‘game-changer’ – Texarkana Gazette

TEXARKANA, Ark. — Crossties, an event venue on Broad Street, officially opened Thursday with an afternoon commemoration downtown — though in practical terms it has been doing business in one form or fashion for months.

The red carpet was rolled to officials who took the opportunity to talk about how this enterprise has helped change the face of downtown.

“This is something the whole community can be proud of,” said Mayor Alan Brown. “This is a game-changer, bringing back the young people, setting the vision, showing the path forward downtown for this city.”

The building that houses Crossties Performance & Entertainment Venue spent most of its life as Moore’s Furniture, until it was sold in December of 2019 and work on this enterprise started.

For this occasion, all four of the rooms in Crossties were decked out and prepared to receive visitors. The venue, measured at 36,000 square feet, even had a few surprises awaiting folks checking it out.

Every room was set up to enable visitors to reflect on the hard work that made the project possible, said Les Munn, one of the owners.

Munn, along with partners Joe Gay and Justin Jones, said seeing the mayor speak about this took him back to the beginning of this venture.

“I can’t tell you how many times I drove through downtown, wondering why there isn’t more here,” he said. “When we began this effort, we were in it 24 hours nonstop from January (2020) to now. I can’t count all the people who helped make this happen. But Mayor Brown, the city board, the department of public works, the fire marshal, so many went above and beyond.”

Munn said there is more to come.

“What we’ve done to the inside, we are doing to the outside as well,” he said. “We are not done yet.”

(Crossties is located at 324 E. Broad Street.)