Hotel was demolished in 1959 and replaced with a motel and later a retirement community. During the 1960s the Manatee River was dredged, and an area nicknamed "the Sandpile" was formed getting developed over the course of the rest of the 20th century and the 21st century. During the Civil Rights Movement, Mayor Hall tried to make desegregation come about in his city in a nonviolent manner. Lunch counters were desegregated sometime during 1960 and a biracial commission was created during the summer of 1963. Bradenton built a new city hall located on 15th Street West bordering Wares Creek in January 1970 as a replacement to their location on 13th Street West, which the city had used since 1913. Governor Claude R. Kirk Jr. arrived in Bradenton on April 6, 1970, in an attempt to stop Manatee County School District's desegregation busing. When he arrived he suspended the district superintendent along with the school district, leading to the district stopping the busing of 2,500 students and 107 teachers. During February he threatened to impeach a federal judge and said he would not sign checks that would pay for busing students. He stayed in the Manatee County School District's Administration building then located at the corner of 9th Avenue and 14th Street for a week before being threatened with a $10,000 fine per day if he continued to stay in the building and was unsuccessful with preventing bussing. The 8-floor Hotel Dixie Grande, which opened in April 1926, was demolished in August 1974. The Green Bridge was replaced in 1986. The city hall moved to a new location on 12th Street West in November 1998 after the property was sold to a local resident with the intention of redeveloping it but plans never materialized. 21st century The local resident who had owned the former city hall property along Wares Creek sold it to a development group sometime in 2004, and it was demolished in December 2004. The Bradenton Riverwalk, a 1.5-mile long park along the Manatee River opened in October 2012. McKechnie Field, the spring training stadium for the Pittsburgh Pirates, was renamed LECOM Park in February 2017. Historic properties Historic properties in Bradenton include: Braden Castle Park Historic District, off Manatee Avenue and 27th St East Bradenton Bank and Trust Company Building, 1925, now the Professional Building, 1023 Manatee Avenue, West Bradenton Carnegie Library, 1405 Fourth Avenue West Iron Block