The inauguration of the new Jackson city administration was impressive. Held at the downtown convention center, it was elegant and well done.
My good friend Jeff Good was the finance chairman of the inauguration so I am not the least surprised by the festive blowout. Everything Jeff touches turns out great, mainly because of his smarts, energy and hard work. Jeff got on the Horhn bandwagon early.
My sense, and a sense shared by others attending the event, was that the professional class of Jackson was back in power and glad to be rid of the most recent radical chapter in our city politics.
Up on stage next to Horhn and the others was Gov. Tate Reeves, Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann, Congressman Bennie Thompson and Sean Tindell, commissioner of the Mississippi Department of Public Safety, which oversees the Jackson Capitol Police. It was a show of unity that has been missing from the Lumumba administrations. Former Mayor Lumumba, by the way, was nowhere to be found.
Horhn spoke of working with all levels of government and bringing in people smarter than him to run the city. He said everything right.
I’ve been in Jackson now 35 years and I’ve seen it go through a lot of ups and downs, but this inauguration filled me with hope for the future of Jackson. It was a class act involving classy people from the people on the podium to the people in the crowd. The times are a changing in Jackson.
This is not the least surprising. The United States is not a radical nation. It is a conservative, prosperous, mainstream nation. Lumumba’s attempt to make Jackson “the most radical city in the world” was doomed for failure, and fail it did, on a grand scale.
All of this has been predicted by suburban Jackson critics who fled the city years ago seeing the writing on the wall. They pointed fingers and shrugged and said “just watch it crumble” and crumble it did. They were right. They can say I told you so.
But Americans tend by their nature to be magnanimous in victory. Few people like to keep kicking a man when he’s down. I’m hoping now we can get over all this acrimony, agree that we all have to work together and create a capital city that can make Mississippi proud and drive growth.
That’s the sense of what I saw in the huge convention center hall packed with at least a thousand people, enjoying great music and delicious food from over two dozen local restaurants. This was diversity at its finest and it was really something to behold. Everybody was mingling, lots of laughter, beautiful gowns and tuxedos, a fine affair that would make the poshest of venues of Jackson proud.
I am blessed to live in the LOHO neighborhood, just east of The District on I-55. It used to be called Leftover because, on a map, it was just left of Eastover and not quite as nice.
I live on a cul-de-sac, Rebel Drive, with great neighbors and quick access to I-55. I can get to Renaissance in 10 minutes, the airport in 15, downtown in 10. LOHO is probably the most centrally located neighborhood in the Jackson metro area.
As a result, I feel like I’m part of every major part of the metro area — suburban Madison, suburban Rankin County and downtown Jackson. I love this. It’s like getting a threefer. I love the diversity.
I’ve watched Madison and Rankin counties boom. I’ve watched the miracle of Fondren’s rebirth and I’m convinced downtown Jackson can revitalize.
We need 2,000 people living in downtown Jackson. That’s the threshold number at which drug stores, grocery stores, restaurants and retail can survive. Right now we have 800.
If the plan to turn the old Deposit Guaranty building into residential happens, that gets downtown to 1,000 people. We need 1,000 more after that. That’s about five six-story residential luxury high rises costing about $25 million apiece, a total of $125 million. If the state subsidized half the cost with tax credits, that would cost the state $60 million
I can’t even begin to count the number of manufacturing plants that have gotten $60-million-dollar subsidies from the state government. And all we’ve gotten for those deals are big manufacturing plants that typically never meet their employment quotas and often shut down after a decade (if not a year or two.)
But if the state legislature, with its billion dollar surplus, could help subsidize the rebirth of our capital city, the benefits could carry on for generations.
The smart young professional class doesn’t want to live in the burbs. That’s why Nashville and Austin are booming. They want to be in a happening, urban environment. These are the young stars who can bring real growth to our state. We need to give them what they want.
We think nothing of spending millions on stadiums and football locker rooms to attract the top college football athletes. We should have the same mentality about attracting bright young professionals to Mississippi.
Even better, when these young people get married and settle down, many move to the suburbs, feeding growth for Madison and Rankin as well.
Build a young professionals' Disney World downtown and they will come. Just look at all the downtown, high-rise residential buildings in Austin, Birmingham, Atlanta, Charleston, Nashville. That’s how you turn around downtown.
Then Jackson needs at least one great, vibrant, bustling, open-all-night street. Farish Street ain’t it. But Capitol Street could be. But it needs retail, swanky clothing shops, upscale restaurants, coffee shops, music venues and all the things that make young professionals want to live downtown. Figure it out and give it to them. The benefits will be far greater than another big box manufacturing plant.
Business people fly into Jackson and judge the metro area by its downtown. That’s just the way it works. Currently, every out-of-town business person who drives through downtown Jackson becomes an ambassador of bad will for our state, spreading national negativity that impedes our growth. This has got to stop. (And our airport needs a huge makeover as well.)
Mississippi is surrounded by growth, and not just nearby Texas and Florida, but Louisiana, Alabama, Arkansas and Tennessee are all experiencing much higher growth rates than Mississippi, which isn’t hard, since Mississippi has lost 24,000 people since 2010.
So here we are, smack dab in the middle of the fastest growing region of the most prosperous nation in the history of the world and we’re shrinking. That’s nuts. How can that be? One factor is our dilapidated and neglected downtown. The center of our state, the downtown of our biggest metro area, the place where our government resides, looks like a dump. That simply has to change.
Finally, our state leaders, indeed the entire voting population, is beginning to embrace this concept and divorce themselves from the notion that they can just leave downtown Jackson to crash and burn.
Speaking at the Stennis Press Forum just last week House Speaker Jason White said that state growth is linked to the prosperity of its capital city. Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann has also voiced the same opinion and so has Gov. Tate Reeves.
And it’s not just lip service. The legislature has created the Capitol Police, now close to 200 strong, and Jackson crime is dropping dramatically. The state has created new state-run courts and made numerous other investments in downtown Jackson.
Big private companies are also providing funds and support. Downtown Jackson Partners has a new energetic head in Liz Brister. Jackson Redevelopment Authority is the perfect vehicle to get these five high-rise residential buildings built.
Susan Garrard, Taylor Nicholas and Chip Pickering are providing great leadership with the Great City Mississippi non-profit organization which has the support of many of our biggest employers. Why are profit-making employers donating money to revitalize downtown Jackson? Because they know what is obvious: Mississippi cannot grow without a vibrant, impressive capital city.
Jackson is behind the curve. We were set back for eight years by a mayor who had a radical political agenda that had nothing to do with growth. That has now changed. The changing of the guard this week was more than just a new mayor and a few new city council members. It was the changing of the guard from a radical political fringe to the affluent, conservative, professional class of Jackson. They are up and coming and they want a city that is up and coming and city leaders who embrace and promote that.
They spoke at the ballot box, overwhelmingly rejecting isolation and radicalism for growth and cooperation. Horhn’s speeches echoed precisely this new tone and willingness to cooperate. Now it is up to both sides to come to the table and work together and acknowledge the obvious — the deterioration of downtown Jackson must be stopped and turned around.
