In December 2024, the Bartow CRA acquired the historic Prince Hall Masonic Lodge at 1095 Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard E., a building of roughly 2,800 square feet of interior space, constructed in 1960 on a corridor that carries deep historical significance for Bartow’s African American community. The CRA’s acquisition cost was $141,822, one of two strategic property acquisitions the agency completed that year alongside the Orpheum Theatre.
The plan for the building is a business incubator. The CRA’s priority parcels memo describes a modern incubator with flexible offices, shared meeting rooms, and entrepreneur support programs covering business planning, market research, basic financial literacy, investor pitch practice, legal support, and branding. An October 2025 City and CRA presentation described the concept as a commercial kitchen or business incubator managed by a private partner, and lists the expected outcomes as creating an entrepreneur pipeline and fostering food-based small business growth.
The project carries weight beyond its own walls. As of a July 2025 joint CRA and City Commission meeting, the business incubator on MLK sat on the CRA board’s priority development list alongside 330 E. Main Street and the Cigar Factory. The CRA’s 2025 Feasibility Study, prepared by Redevelopment Management Associates (RMA), confirms the purchase and the incubator use in its recommendations and pairs the building with a corridor-wide program of development incentives for Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard between L.B. Brown Avenue and Highway 17. In that program, the incubator is an early public investment meant to generate activity on the corridor and draw private investment in behind it.
The study’s recommendation pages include an existing-conditions photograph and a proposed-conditions rendering of the building, showing a renovated storefront presence on the boulevard. The rendering is an illustration of one possible outcome, not a final design; the build-out will be shaped by the architect and operating partner the CRA brings on. Early CRA planning estimates the build-out investment at roughly $2 million, funded by the CRA with a possible federal Economic Development Administration grant match.
From here, the sequence runs through design, financing, and renovation: engage an architect, finalize the funding package, and bring the building online as the corridor’s home for new businesses. The lodge already holds a place in the neighborhood’s story; the incubator is a chance to put that place to work for the next generation of Bartow entrepreneurs, on the same street where so much of that story was written.
