Ted Duckworth of Duckworth Realty in Jackson will update the Jackson Chamber of Commerce on the status of the District at Eastover, a proposed retail and residential development on the site of the old Mississippi School for the Deaf and Blind off I-55 in Jackson, during the Chamber’s Executive Committee meeting on Sept. 1.
A bill passed during the 2007 regular legislative session allows the Mississippi Development Authority, acting on behalf of the state Department of Education, to lease the property for redevelopment. Duckworth won the right to negotiate with the MDA lease terms that have to be agreed upon before work can begin.
Very few details about the parameters of the lease or the project itself are currently available. Hopefully Duckworth’s presentation will fill in some gaps. The best I could come up with after a Google search is this and this.
The meeting is scheduled to begin at 11:30 a.m. in the Electric 308 building in Downtown Jackson.
If you’ve read my bio you know that here at Magnolia Marketplace, we’re huge sports fans, specifically ones that involve helmets and shoulder pads. Aside from probably Michael Vick, the biggest NFL story the past few months has been the will-he-or-won’t-he regarding Brett Favre coming out of retirement for what seems like the 20th time and playing this season.
Reports emerging this morning have Favre on a plane to Minnesota to sign with the Vikings. Click here for the details. Brett Favre is one of two football heroes I’ve ever had — Jerry Rice is the other — but this has story has been old since this time last year. Now it’s just aggravating.
This reminds me of the Motley Crue song, “Don’t Go Away Mad (Just Go Away).”
To paraphrase the lyrics, “Brett, don’t go away mad. Brett, just go away.”
I bet there are a few folks in Green Bay thinking that this morning. Since the Vikings are the Packers’ blood rival, they’re probably thinking a lot worse, too.
A full story is up on the site about Harvey Johnson’s speech to the Downtown Jackson Rotary Club today. What struck me the most was the reception Johnson got from the 400 or so in attendance at the Jackson Convention Complex. (About the JCC: If you haven’t been there, make time to check it out. It’s easy to get to and the air conditioners are phenomenal.)
Johnson got two standing ovations, one when he was introduced and another when he was finished. That’s news by itself, because when Johnson lost to Frank Melton in 2005, he left office a pretty unpopular figure, with some who were in attendance today working hard to help Melton defeat him. A lot of folks there today also supported Marshand Crisler, Johnson’s opponent in the runoff this past spring.
In a stroke of absolutely perfect timing, Johnson took office about a month before a major repaving operation started on the city’s streets. The $26.2 million bond to pay for it was actually issued before Melton left office.
My commute to Downtown from Northeast Jackson takes me over Old Canton Road and Adkins Boulevard, two roads that badly needed improving. The worst parts of Adkins have gotten new asphalt, and preliminary work has started on Old Canton. As for me and my car, that’s worth a standing O.
Lately, a lot of folks have been jumping on the recession-is-over bandwagon. The crowd grew when the U.S. Department of Labor announced a few days ago that the economy shed only about a quarter of a million jobs in July, which is the lowest number of any month since last summer. Compare that with January and February, both of which saw more than half a million jobs lost. The good news? July’s numbers were better than most economists anticipated. The bad news? A quarter of a million jobs were still lost.
The same principle applies to today’s news from RealtyTrac, the California-based outfit that tracks foreclosure activity across the country. Mississippi had 813 homeowners on the business end of foreclosure activity in June — meaning they either got a notice of default, notice of auction or their bank repossessed their home. That figure dropped 41 percent in July, to 478. That’s encouraging, and could be hard evidence of at least a small degree of recovery. Now for the bad news: The 478 homeowners who encountered some sort of foreclosure activity in July marks a 152 percent increase from July 2008, and RealtyTrac’s outlook says that number will likely rise over the next six months.
It’s a little more than 24 hours until the weekend, however, and exactly three weeks until football season, so for now, I’ll choose to focus on the positive.
Most of my work is done either over the phone or in a meeting room. So it was nice that most of this morning was spent at Lake Caroline Golf Club for a story in next week’s MBJ about Randy Watkins’ team refurbishing the place. Watkins bought the Madison County course, which had been closed for two years after the old developer went bankrupt, in June. What has happened between then and now is pretty interesting. Watkins, who has always been a good interview, didn’t disappoint today.
