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couple of decades ago, the phrase “economic development” meant industrial and corporate development, with the big scores being the landing of major manufacturing deals, ones touted in banner headlines. There was also small and retail business creation to attend to. Talk of entrepreneurship was de rigueur. By the beginning of the 21st century, however, urban economic development met community development at a crossroads, looking across the border to an area where talk of sidewalks, exercise paths and blight had more traditionally reigned. Formerly the province of neighborhood group leaders and activists, this talk inched its way into the everyday conversations of real estate developers and economic development officers. By now, it sometimes seem as if all parties involved in urban projects are using the same specialized language.

You can hear it in the talk about economic development in Jackson: talk of the importance of smarter zoning, of density and walkability, and amenities such as cycling trails. You hear it in talk of attracting crowds from the city’s vital medical corridor to outdoor dining areas where people can hang out and mingle. It is found in jargon about “New Urbanism” and a couple of decades ago, the phrase “economic development” meant industrial and corporate development, with the big scores being the landing of major manufacturing deals, ones touted in banner headlines. There was also small and retail business creation to attend to. Talk of entrepreneurship was de rigueur. By the beginning of the 21st century, however, urban economic development met community development at a crossroads, looking across the border to an area where talk of sidewalks, exercise paths and blight had more traditionally reigned. Formerly the province of neighborhood group leaders and activists, this talk inched its way into the everyday conversations of real estate developers and economic development officers. By now, it sometimes seem as if all parties involved in urban projects are using the same specialized language.

You can hear it in the talk about economic development in Jackson: talk of the importance of smarter zoning, of density and walkability, and amenities such as cycling trails. You hear it in talk of attracting crowds from the city’s vital medical corridor to outdoor dining areas where people can hang out and mingle. It is found in jargon about “New Urbanism” and a “Creative Class.”

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B y R a y M i k e l l • P h o t o s b y R a y M i k e l l

Econom

ic Development Brings Growth Back Into The City With Soul

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Think: the Fondren experience, writ larger. Well, scratch that. Think more of a series of distinct neighborhoods, each with their own, authentic character, all filled with cultural and retail amenities. Think of downtown Jackson, still growing after the redevelopment of the Hotel King Edward and Standard Life Buildings. Think, moreover, of a potentially bustling Farish Street entertainment district. Imagine a thriving medical corridor surrounded by a Belhaven area with boutiques lining a decidedly less stressful and non-pockmarked Fortification Street, with a gleaming new Baptist Medical Center expansion with doctors’ offices and retail nearby. Imagine more specialty grocers, theaters with dining, things becoming staples of American urban life elsewhere.

Think, instead of Fondren copycats, of many vibrant Capital City neighborhoods with their own senses of place, informed by history but not trapped by it.

This vision of a new American city has come to places like Jackson via people working in urban planning, architecture and the social sciences. The Creative Class idea, for instance, was the brainchild of urban studies specialist Richard Florida. It loosely refers to an educated, young and mobile professional class that is increasingly demanding urban amenities and cultural dynamism. By contrast, New Urbanism came from a group of architects who, in reaction to sprawling developments of the 1960s and ‘70s, turned toward urban density and traditional street and sidewalk patterns of the pre-World War II past. These ideas may have been reactions to an

already-developing, bubbling-to-the-surface zeitgeist, but the specific terminology spread outward as the booming 1990s gave way to a new century.

A few New Urbanism-style developments are in Jackson suburbs now, most notably in Madison County. The housing market downturn that began in 2008 changed things, though, as noted by local developer Ted Duckworth. With housing no longer booming at the outskirts, American developers are turning back to established city and suburban populations. At the same time, the ideas of density and walkability fit with what people in these communities want. “They have more of a sense of purpose,” Duckworth said of these developments. “They weren’t built in a field, trying to attract people to that end of town.” It is not as though more traditional industrial development, of the recruitment and incentives-driven sort pioneered by Mississippi governor. Hugh White during an earlier economic crisis, the Great Depression, is completely on the wane. Through an ad valorem tax exemption incentive, for example, Jackson’s city government helped Stuart C. Irby Co. create a new retail space and state-of-the-art distribution center. The expansion to its headquarters in downtown Jackson created more than 150 new jobs, and represented an investment of $6 million. To the north on State Street, however, the more modern, community-focused side of economic development is more clearly at work.

The Creative Class idea, for instance,

was the brainchild of urban studies specialist Richard Florida.

t loosely refers to an educated, young and mobile professional class

that is increasingly demanding urban amenities and cultural dynamism.

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HealtH Care and BelHavenAs the city government’s boasting of expansions

in the city’s medical corridor shows, health care is now the driver of Jackson’s urban engine, more so than industry or state government. Jackson is not unique in this. Increasing lifespans and an aging baby boomer population are spurring growth in the health care sector nationwide. It just so happens, meanwhile, that health care jobs—classic Creative Class type jobs--are highly treasured by economic development professionals, bested only by high tech jobs.

Despite this, Greater Belhaven Neighborhood Foundation Executive (GBNF) Director Virgi Lindsay said the importance of health care had at first slipped past her and others involved in pushing for the reconstruction and revitalization of Fortification Street. It took a planner of the New Urbanism school to clue them in. He liked their focus on Fortification and their seeking of zoning changes to make the street more amenable to small retail businesses. Still, according to Lindsay, he told them, “Let me show you where your real focus is. Let me show you where the real energy is gonna be in this neighborhood,” Lindsay noted. That, she said, was Manship Street and Baptist Medical Center. “Up to that point, I don’t think that had really been on anybody’s radar.”

What he noticed, through GBNF research, was that Baptist owned several empty properties in the State at Manship area. Consequently, Belhaven leaders asked to make a presentation before the Baptist board, where they would suggest that neighborhood rezoning had given the hospital a chance to do something big. The eventual result was a plan for a mixed-use development, with doctors’ offices and retail spaces. The new five-story medical office building is now expected to open in spring 2013. Its construction is expected to cost around $45 million. Incentives are involved, again, in this case through tax increment financing, frequently

used by cities since the 1980s as means to fund the redevelopment of blighted areas nationwide, via

increases in property values over time.The announcement of Baptist’s decision capped

more than a dozen years of GBNF work on area redevelopment. This included years dedicated to the

redevelopment of Fortification, the result of which will not only slow traffic on the now-unnerving street, but make it more aesthetically pleasing, while also allowing for more commerce. Fortification will have dedicated turn lanes, along with sidewalks and landscaping. The non-profit foundation’s efforts also led to the restoration of Belhaven Park on Poplar Boulevard, and the creation of funded plans for a bicycle path that will run along an old Illinois Central rail bed. These amenities complement a focus on boutique or smaller-scale commerce.

nortH JaCksonA hospital expansion might be a big

thing for economic development but so, it turns out, might specialized groceries that cater to the creative economy types who work in health care. The evidence: to cite but one example, a 2007 study by the Portland, Oregon, real estate development and land use economics

consulting firm, Johnson and Reid, suggested that specialty grocery stores can

increase home prices by an average of 17.5 percent in surrounding areas, more than any other type of business. Granted, the City of Soul is worlds apart culturally from the City of Roses, a Pacific Northwest mecca for creative sorts. Even so, at least one specialty grocer appears to be on its way to Jackson, and possibly two.

The first is a Whole Foods Market in Jackson’s Highland Village. According to Guy Boyll III, Highland Village’s Vice President of Operations, construction on the store should begin in August 2012 and will take around nine months to complete. It will be a 300,000 square foot store that will feature not only natural and organic groceries, but also lunch and take-out operations that are wildly popular at the Austin, Texas-based chain’s locations elsewhere.

Since first getting calls about the project from a then-anonymous retailer two years ago, Boyll has learned more about the so-called “Whole Foods Effect” on property values. More recently, he has had people tell him that the store’s decision to open in Jackson would lead them to consider moving here. He has also heard from people from other parts of the state with special dietary needs who say they will drive to Jackson just to shop at the store.

Duckworth would also like for a specialty or smaller grocer to be an anchor of its planned District at Eastover

development, at the old Mississippi School for the Blind site. His company has also looked at getting a theater for the location, one they would want to be a more upmarket theater with a mix of big-budget and art house films and dining, as is becoming the norm in American cities. At this point, though, he is just certain of these things: he wants a grocery store as an anchor and, after that, wants restaurants with al fresco dining galore. The District will have green space and landscaping that entails keeping some trees at the old school site around. Finally, he wants a hotel there.

Maybe make that one more thing he is certain of: “I think people are really looking for this quality of life,” the developer said, noting that he is looking at completing the project over two years. “I mean, look at the success of Fondren. There’s no place for Fondren to grow to speak of because every little building is full…. We feel like we’re just playing for that base that’s wanted to see growth but there hasn’t been anywhere for it to go but out.”

downtown and Fondren

If developer David Watkins and his brother, attorney Jason Watkins, have their way, however, Fondren will see more amenities. The first of these, the Pix/Capri Theater, has been purchased by the latter Watkins. He has already announced plans to turn it into a three-screen, dinner-and-a-movie theater of the type discussed above. Eventually,

David Watkins and his Watkins Development want to build a mixed-use Whitney Place, a renovation of the existing strip with new construction behind it.For now, however, the main focus of Watkins Development is the ongoing Farish Street revitalization. This is in no small part a planned entertainment and arts district and a redevelopment of what was the main street of commerce

and culture for African-Americans in the pre-civil rights era. Farish is located adjacent to

downtown Jackson at its northwestern corner.

The project, as most longtime Jacksonians know, has been in the works for years. Watkins’ company took over the project from another developer, however, in 2008—just, as Watkins Project Manager Julie Skipper notes, the American economy tanked. The company

has already done a formidable amount of work on the project all the same, as even a short drive down the first block of the street makes clear. Several large and extensively renovated buildings sit empty now, clean and polished but barren of signs, as financing that will

allow a build-out of the first phase is finalized. Skipper noted that it is fun working on projects like Farish and, previously, the Watkins-handled redevelopments

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of the King Edward and Standard Life buildings, which few people thought could be completed. Even so, she admitted, “It can be daunting and scary.”

Skipper is upbeat nonetheless, and talks in animated fashion about what Watkins wants to do with Farish in the future. It would not be just an entertainment district, she says, but would serve as a center for creativity and entrepreneurship, one providing jobs for hundreds of people and gigs for many more musicians who could record in Farish facilities. What Watkins ultimately wants to bring to Farish is not just entertainment, but a community-centered sort of economic development, one that Farish had in the old days. And so it comes full circle: economic development and community development, old friends but relative strangers for decades, shaking hands again. o

Econo

mic D

evelo

pment

and Community Development...

old friends but relative

strangers for decades,

shaking hands again.