ROSWELL, N.M. – The City of Roswell will soon have a new cultural plaza right behind the Chaves County courthouse where many of the city’s events currently take place.

“The cultural plaza for Chaves County, we came up with the idea for this about eight or nine years ago, I would say,” said Bill Williams, a Chaves County manager. 

The plaza will have a stage, shade and seating. A county manager told KOB 4 it was one issue they wanted to solve.

“We were actually working with the City of Roswell trying to figure out ways to provide bathrooms downtown to take the pressure off the local businesses during large events,” said Williams.

That wasn’t the only issue they were facing.

“The current location of a lot of events is the Travis County Courthouse lawn. And it kind of creates a little bit of an issue for parking. People have to park along Main Street. Often they’ll close 4th and 5th Street for vendors and people that are participating in events and so that limits the parking,” said Williams. 

Having the plaza behind the courthouse could solve a lot of those issues.

“The ability to have this area in the back right adjacent to a parking lot allows a lot of that pressure to be off of Main Street itself. However, it’s close enough to Main Street that people can still walk up and down Main Street,” said Williams. 

Williams mentioned not all the events would move to the plaza. But it likely be the new home for the annual UFO Festival and other big celebrations.

Right now, there is $2.2 million for the project that came from Main Street Roswell and Chaves County.

“We believe this is going to be a pretty quick project, and we’ll be able to see it come to fruition quickly and people will be able to utilize it very soon,” said Williams. 

The plans are still in the works, but Williams hopes construction will start this August and only take about a year to finish.