Jackson Free Press

Briefing a small community gathering about downtown Jackson, including the Capitol Street two-way project, Ben Allen talked about regret.

"I have no regrets about Capitol Street," Allen, a former city councilman and president of Downtown Jackson Partners, which oversees the downtown business-improvement district, told the crowd at Koinonia Coffee House this morning.

Allen said today that a February completion date will again be pushed back, this time to early April. The project, which city officials announced in Fall 2012, has been plagued with problems since the beginning. Even the first planned groundbreaking had to be rescheduled. The thrust of the plan is to slow down traffic on the central business district's main artery, which, in theory, would encourage people to stop to eat and shop.

Allen's group was instrumental in kickstarting the project and drawing some of the initial funding through a congressional earmark. However, Allen did admit one regret related to the project—that the city didn't negotiate a better agreement with the contractor.

City officials and downtown business owners and residents have long grumbled about the absence on some days of Madison-based Eutaw Construction Company Inc. and its subcontractors. In meetings, city officials have said that the company sometimes moves its crews around to other projects.

In the meantime, Allen ticked off a list of other downtown developments that are on the horizon, although he declined to go into specifics about several of the projects. Among them are the recent announcement that Houston, Texas-based Evercore Companies LLC. will convert the Edison Walthall Hotel into apartments, as well as an upcoming groundbreaking on the Westin Hotel project that has been in the works for several years.

A plan for lofts across from the King Edward—which developers back-burnered when they failed to secure low-income housing tax credits from the state—is ongoing, but Allen said he was not at liberty to discuss the plans.

"What they're planning is going to be beautiful," Allen said.