Business Blog

I’ve always bought into the adage that readers don’t care what a journalist must go through to get information for a story. Readers don’t want to hear that Councilman Smith bolted his door shut when you arrived at his office to ask who paid for that wonderful new Olympic-sized swimming pool, cabana and tennis court [...]

A decision by Jackson City Council Monday (Dec. 19) to build a 16-floor, $96 million convention center hotel will hand Mayor Harvey Johnson a signature victory but a thumbs down from the council will give him a serious setback. The city put the deal on a fast-track to enable proposed development partner Transcontinental Realty Investments [...]

Lack of a convention headquarters hotel has been blamed for the Jackson Convention hotel complex losing $12 million in business last year. But the 330,000-square-foot complex has lost far more meetings and convention business since its late 2009 opening for reasons other than available hotel space, a study by H.C. Johnson Consulting of Chicago found. [...]

A public forum Jackson City Councilman Tony Yarber staged Nov. 17 to hear details on a planned convention center hotel deal “right from the horse’s mouth” fell short of that expectation when the city’s proposed partner did a no-show. Instead, the 50 or so people gathered at the Anderson United Methodist Church got some brief [...]

Though the Jackson Redevelopment Authority doesn’t expect any takers, the authority’s board agreed Wednesday to a 15-day advertising period for a developer other than Transcontinental Realty Investments of Dallas to partner with the city on a convention headquarters hotel. The JRA board sees the action as a formality and a step toward moving a final [...]

Getting OK on buildout money will not be an easy task Developers of the Farish Street Entertainment District have changed their leasing strategy to include paying for the buildouts of the clubs and shops they have restored along the first block of the former business and nightlife hub of Jackson’s African-American community. Watkins Development, which [...]