Jackson Free Press

This story has been edited to include recently obtained information regarding the newly opened growler station at McDade's Market.

circa. Moving to Interiors Market

On Feb. 28, circa. Urban Artisan Living (2771 Old Canton Rd.) will be closing its current location in Fondren and moving one block over to Interiors Market (659 Duling Ave.) over the first two weeks of March.

circa. owner Michele Escude said in a release that the move to Interiors Market is temporary, and that she will use the time the store is there to "re-imagine, re-create and re-direct the future of circa."

News for Jackson's Craft Beer Market

Quite a bit is afoot in Jackson's craft beer scene, starting with the growler station available at the recently opened Whole Foods branch.

The Whole Foods growler station consists of five taps, all of which contain local Mississippi craft beers that will rotate roughly every few weeks, and possibly weekly as sales pick-up. Customers put down a $4 deposit on either a 32-ounce or 64-ounce bottle, which they can then fill with one of the five beer varieties available. Whole Foods returns the deposit on the bottle when the customer brings it back. The actual cost of the beer, which the deposit is added to, varies by brand.

On Wednesday, Feb. 19, McDade's Market opened it's own growler station at its Maywood Mart Location (1220 E. Northside Dr.). The store's Growlerville station features 12 craft beers in 32-ounce or 64-ounce bottles. The cost of the bottle is included with the initial purchase of a growler, after which customers can bring the same bottle back to be washed and reused for future purchases. McDade's expects to have growler stations open at its Belhaven location (904 E. Fortification St.) within the next four weeks and its Duling location (653 Duling Ave.) by the end of April.

McDade's offers a variety of draft beers from Capital City Beverage and Southern Beverage, including Ken Ruth Amber, Yalobusha Mississippa IPA, Yazoo Gerst and more, with the available selection rotating seasonally.

The five brands currently available at Whole Foods are Southern Prohibition Fire Ant Red, Lazy Magnolia Southern Hops'pitality, Lucky Town Pub Ale, Yalobusha Water Valley Copperhead and Crooked Letter Ocean Springs Mystery Romp Porter.

Speaking of Crooked Letter Brewing Co. (1805 Government St., Ocean Springs), the brewery recently announced plans to launch three new beers for Beau Rivage Casino Resort (875 Beach Blvd., Biloxi).

Crooked Letter will produce the Sheep Shank Ale, Anchor Bend Imperial Stout and Double Half Hitch Imperial. Beau Rivage Beverage Manager Bruce Cartwright said in a release that the resort wanted to hit all the demographics in the casino.

Before Hurricane Katrina, the casino's Coast Brewing Company made seven beers were brewed onsite. Cartwright said the casino wants to bring craft beers back.

In other beer news, Lucky Town Brewery (1710 N. Mill St.) is continuing with its plans to expand into midtown later this year. Construction is under way after the company received approval from Midtown Partners and the city last year. The old roof of the building was removed and a new one is being installed. Chip Jones, co-founder of Lucky Town, said that the brewery's brewhouse, fermentation vessels and canning line—all of which are made using U.S. materials—should be complete by May. Opening day for the new location is set for July.

Lucky Town is currently taking applications for a Mississippi sales representative. For information visit Lucky Town's website.

C Spire to Provide Data Services for Southern Farm Bureau

Jackson-based Southern Farm Bureau Life Insurance Company recently completed an agreement with C Spire for data center services to support its enhanced mainframe, business continuity and distributed systems disaster-recovery program. C Spire is preparing to open a new, state-of-the-art $20 million data center at the Thad Cochran Research, Technology and Economic Development Park in Starkville within 10 months.

Charles Allen, vice president and CTO of Southern Farm Bureau, said in a statement that key factors in the company's choice of C Spire included the new center's geographical proximity to its primary data operations, the high-end certified rating of the center, being a single provider including fiber connectivity, and being a Mississippi company with locally based teams and a true commitment to a high level of customer service.

The C Spire data center will be one of only 52 in the U.S. with a Tier 3 or 4 rating, the highest in the industry based on data center certifications by the Uptime Institute. The Tier 3-plus facility will be the premiere data center in the Southeast with ample commercial space available for businesses and government agencies and the only one in its class and capability within 250 miles of its location.

Along with its location in a low-risk geographic zone, the center boasts direct access to C Spire's ring-protected fiber optic network and will be managed 24 hours a day, seven days a week and 365 days a year by the company's locally-based IT staff. C Spire has been named to InformationWeek 500's top technology innovators list for two years in row.

Other services C Spire plans to offer at the center include colocation, managed hosting, computing, storage, disaster recovery, enterprise cloud services, network and connectivity. The center will also feature the latest security infrastructure, complete disaster contingency plans, a C Spire solutions center and management office and conference room space for traveling client IT staff.

C Spire operates two other data centers in Mississippi—one in Ridgeland and the other in downtown Jackson. For more information about C Spire's new data center plans, C Spire cloud services or C Spire Business Solutions, visit www.cspire.com/cloudservices.