Right off the top, forget grandiose ideas such as building a waterfront strip mall along the Pearl River and using Town Creek to flood behind Farish Street to install a marina. And forget about making Farish an entertainment district like Beale in Memphis or Bourbon in New Orleans. Stop trying to make Jackson into what it is not.
The boom downtown, such as it is, is paradoxically not a commercial boom. It is residential. The Lamar Life and the King Edward have largely become apartments and condominiums. So has the Electric Building. Developers are also converting the old Federal Building and the Edison Walthall Hotel into residential spaces.
It's paradoxical because a casual stroll down Capitol Street shows that commercial property vacancies are at an all-time high. Buildings stand empty. Instead of business signs, for-lease signs grace the entrances. Where people moving downtown work is a mystery since Jackson lost its businesses to Madison, but they must be somewhere.
This is a good thing. There is life downtown after all. But if it is to be a residential center, downtown will need a couple of things.
A school, for one. To encourage couples with children to move downtown, a nearby school is essential. This is best accomplished with a campus that accommodates all grades from kindergarten through senior year of high school. Sure, that means that kids from well-heeled downtown condo owners and less-fortunate kids living in shotgun shacks will be going to the same school. But that's a good thing, both for the rich and the poor, and for society overall.
A grocery store is essential. There's McDade's at Fortification and Jefferson, but the new downtown needs a much bigger grocer with greater variety. There are enough restaurants downtown to keep a grocery in business when combined with residential commerce. The fine-dining places will be grateful to have one. In fact, move the old farmers market on Woodrow Wilson into newly built stalls and entice a first-class grocery with the argument that their business will increase with traffic coming in.
You know that big, empty property on Pascagoula Street down by the train tracks? Put it there. Better yet, use that area for the school campus and move the farmers market into the atrium of the Landmark Center.
Now, let's move people around, get them from one place to another. The casual Capitol Street stroller will notice the construction of the two-way lanes with roundabouts. Presently, the west end of Capitol has the roundabouts installed, and there's one roundabout further east by the Governor's Mansion. Let's limit the roundabouts to those and just resurface the rest of Capitol. The slower traffic moving through the roundabouts gets to see the building fronts right through their windshields.
Luckily, that stretch of Capitol is full of charming three- and four-story buildings perfect for window shopping from your car. You'll have plenty of time to look without an accident while waiting to yield.
On the subject of the Capitol Street project, one of the streets running perpendicular on Capitol needs to be made two-way to allow better access to the new two-way Capitol.
Otherwise, we'll have to circle around Amite and Pearl in tinier circles until we get where we're going.
Parking has always been a problem downtown. The Capitol Street project will not make it any better. We need more spacious and convenient areas to park without having to walk 20 blocks to get there.
Jackson once had electric street cars. You can still see some of the old rails here and there, like ancient roots that appear above the ground. Alas, digging them up now is out of the question. We'll have to use gas-powered trolley cars. Make them air conditioned for the summer heat.
Grandiose plans have stymied Farish Street progress, even though it is a designated resort area. Take a big truck up to the Delta and buy out a couple of blues joints. Move the entire contents to a few places on Farish to get it going. Then, establish another resort area on Commerce Street from Hal and Mal's and Martin's all the way south. Those old buildings would make lovely restaurants and bars and music venues, even without a grand Capitol Green. No need to worry about drunk drivers crossing from Commerce to Farish. Put them on the trolleys.
There. Now we have a first-class residential area downtown. Will commercial revitalization be far behind? No. And neither will the tax base to pay for it all.
William Spell Jr. is a native Jacksonian and retired lawyer who lives in Belhaven. His current avocation is photography, especially taking pictures of downtown Jackson. You can see his work at WilliamSpellJr.com.
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