Jackson Free Press

The $75 million Livingston Village project, which developers plan to build near the Jackson Medical Mall, is moving ahead since the Jackson City Council maneuvered a few bumps in the road last week. After a contentious battle with unwilling Ward 3 residents, the zoning committee voted 7-to-0 to approve a zone change transforming the site of the old Hood Furniture Factory from its industrial category to mixed use. The decision will allow developer Mike Smith, CEO of MPI Center, LLC, to move ahead with property demolition this year and begin construction on Ward 3's newest neighborhood.

Ward 3 Councilman Kenneth Stokes and some residents originally stood against the development, warning that the project would increase water run-off and spark more flooding in a badly drained area already prone to deluge. Stokes also warned that the project would choke the local school system.

The zoning board approved the project, a self-contained neighborhood of homes and businesses, last week with no outcry from residents, including Stokes.

"I guess it was a matter of addressing the concerns of the residents. My engineer turned in whatever changes they wanted, and everything seemed to be fine," said former Jackson Planning and Development Deputy Director Carl Allen, now employed at MPI. Allen was frustrated last week, as project delays bit into the company's bottom line, pushing back groundbreaking and threatening financial backing. He still laments that the project will have to wait until spring of next year for any real construction.

"By the time we get all of our financing package completed, it'll be too late in the season," Allen said.

Smith said the project delay would add cost but not kill the project.

"It'll hurt us a little, but we'll move on. It's an extra year of costs that we shouldn't have had to deal with," Smith said.

Livingston Village, when completed, will look nothing like earlier re-development endeavors, according to engineers. The project is steeped in the concept known as New Urbanism.

"New Urbanism is designed to help bring crime down," said Susan Lunardini, of Southern Consultants, the engineering company helping to design the project. "People do not commit crimes when they think they're being watched. If you've got second or third stories above you and you don't know who's watching you, you don't commit crimes."

Smith is convinced of success.

Developers plan a collection of single-family homes, as well as condo and loft homes between $115,000 and $175,000. The homes will surround a main parking lot, a grocery store, a job training center, farmer's market, daycare and numerous other retail and business offices. The community will be enclosed in a fence similar to that of Millsaps College and will contain no quick outlet onto Livingston Road, discouraging quick getaways.

"It's a new concept that has worked well in other areas," he said, explaining that the idea is to create a small-town atmosphere within the big city, complete with central meeting place and familiarity with your neighbors.

New Urbanism is getting an unlikely facelift in the way MPI is trying it. Most exercises in New Urbanism follow the whim of financial backers, who encourage developers to apply New Urbanism to unprocessed land, untainted by previous development, according to John Norquist, president and CEO of the Congress for New Urbanism in Chicago.

Norquist said that the federal government generally encourages suburban sprawl over New Urbanism in inner-cities.

"When you look at federal programs like Fannie Mae, they say that no more than 25 percent of development can be non-residential. That means that if you want a drug store or coffee shop on the first floor (of a multi-use building), Fannie Mae won't fund it for you."

Federal tax incentives, courtesy of Hurricane Katrina and subsequent GO-Zone legislation, have given Smith's financial backers the wherewithal to gamble on New Urbanism in the state's capital city, in an inner-city environment. The project is lavishly experimental, and if it proves a success, it could change the face of re-development in the south.

"I don't know of anyplace in Mississippi that this has been done," Smith said. "None of this would be possible without GO-Zone. That's the real linchpin."