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Posted Mar 15, 2024, 5:00 AM
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Join Date: May 2023
Location: JXN Mississippi
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FONDREN FORWARD: HISTORIC JACKSON NEIGHBORHOOD LAUNCHES INITIATIVE TO PLAN FOR FUTURE GROWTH
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Data from the 2020 census predicted the population of Fondren would start to decline by 2027.
“It was less than a 1 percent decline, but it was a trend that needed to be reversed before it started,” said Rebecca Garrison, executive director of the Fondren Renaissance Foundation.
Architects and urban planners who work in Fondren suggested a way to move the neighborhood forward.
“They came up with the idea that we hire our own urban planner with the help of the city of Jackson,” said Sandy Carter, a Fondren resident, who chairs the effort known as Fondren Forward.
Carter, a retired Trustmark Bank employee who leads the fundraising, has collected $275,000 in donations for the foundation to hire a firm to produce a masterplan.
Ideas tossed out so far include improving public safety, connecting Fondren with the Museum to Market Trail, finding a solution to make it easier to get from Fondren to the University of Mississippi Medical Center and coming up with a tie-in to Highland Village, he said.
The masterplan, which will cover the area that stretches from Woodrow Wilson Avenue to Northside Drive and from North West Street to I-55, is expected to encompass economic development strategies, preservation of cultural assets, conservation of natural resources, provision of community facilities, current and future housing requirements, zoning and land use, transportation and mobility and prioritized allocation of public funds.
A public meeting is scheduled March 21 at 6:30 p.m. at the Fondren Church gymnasium. Design options for the neighborhood will be presented, and community input is sought.
The planning process is lengthy, about nine months, and an action plan is not expected until October, Garrison said.
In calling on potential donors, Carter said he discovered that many people want to contribute what they can to improve the city and see it thrive.
“We’re seeing a real concerted effort to make Jackson and Fondren better,” he said. “A year and a half ago we hit rock bottom and the city was a terrible mess, but our water system is better, and our sewer system is better.
“When it got so bad, I called a Realtor about putting our house on the market. My wife looked at me and said, ‘You can talk about it or you can do something about it.’”
Every church in Fondren, all the banks, private foundations and the utility companies have all been generous, he said, naming just a few of the donors, in helping get Fondren Forward off the ground.
With an overall fundraising goal of $400,000, an additional $125,000 is needed to implement suggestions from the masterplan and Carter has no worries about securing those donations. “I feel confident we’ll get to the $400,000,” he said.
Fundraising has been a team effort, Carter said, crediting Garrison with keeping him organized.
An 18-member steering committee composed of Fondren residents, property owners, renters, business owners, advocates and city of Jackson staff, is in place and the foundation’s board of directors are responsible for the overall oversight.
Last fall, the city of Jackson assisted the foundation in selecting an urban planner. Five firms were interviewed and City Collective, which has an office in Atlanta, was chosen, Carter said.
Blake Reeves, an urban planner who grew up in Jackson and is a discipline leader of urban design and planning at City Collective, is involved.
“To have someone who knows Fondren, its rich history and its people to lead our effort is the best of all worlds,” Garrison said.
A team of three individuals from City Collective met with more than 30 people in four days to glean all the information they could, Carter said. “We were going from seven to seven,” he said.
The team consulted the city’s Director of Planning and Development Chloe Dotson, Rep. Shanda Yates, Rep. Chris Bell, Sen. David Blount, Jackson City Council Members Ashby Foote, Virgi Lindsay and Aaron Banks, the city’s Chief Administrative Officer Louis P. Wright Sr. and the mayor’s Chief of Staff Safiya R. Omari, Ph.D., but it didn’t stop there.
Representatives from the Mississippi Department of Archives and History, JXN Water, the University of Mississippi Medical Center, Millsaps College, St. Andrew’s Episcopal School, the Greater Belhaven Foundation, LeFleur East Foundation and “all the developers who would talk to us” were also spoken with, Carter said.
“The council members have been very helpful and said, ‘Keep this up,”’ Carter said. “They said, ‘Take this and run.’ The city has been very helpful. We’ve worked as a team.”
He said city leaders have said, ‘We like what you’re doing,’ and want the foundation to share its planning process with other neighborhoods, with the idea being ‘if all of us start talking abut what’s going on in our areas maybe we can help each other.”
More than 100 people attended the first community meeting earlier this year, Garrison said. Four-hundred-fifty people responded to the online survey at fondrenforward.com and another 3,600 have visited the website.
Input from the community is especially important, Garrison said, so that the masterplan benefits the area in the best way possible.
The positive response to the planning process and fundraising communicates that “people still have hope for Jackson and want to invest in our city,” Garrison said. “Yes, this is a Fondren focused effort but, at the end of the day, it is about the city. We want to do our part to restore the city’s tax base and have more people calling Fondren home.”
Barry Plunkett, a Fondren resident and owner of Interiors Market in Woodland Hills Shopping Center in Fondren, said Fondren already has a lot going for it, including beautiful residences, numerous banks, several churches, retail and many places to eat in just a few blocks, and a masterplan for the future makes good sense.
Hiring a consultant, who can view Fondren with fresh eyes, is wise, he said, since the city of Jackson employees do not have the luxury of devoting time to a single project such as a neighborhood masterplan, he said.
A consultant with expertise and ideas from other cities can provide an objective view without a political agenda, and that can be useful, he said.
Mike Peters, a longtime Jackson businessman responsible for the development of Fondren Corner and Duling School, also gives a thumbs up to the planning that is under way.
“The consultant is bringing ideas from other communities like us and that’s good,” he said.
Fondren remains a bright spot in the city, Peters said, noting the move of Jones Walker law firm into the BankPlus building and Amerigo Italian Restaurant’s move into Duling.
One thing that makes Fondren stand out, he said, is its positive vibe. “It’s not all focused on the negative but what can we do to make things better,” he said.
Fondren is not the first neighborhood in the city to employ a planning process.
The Greater Belhaven Foundation has done so, although the process has not been on the scale and expense of that in Fondren, said Susan Garrard, who chairs the foundation.
“We have done extensive work with the Small Town Center at Mississippi State,” she said. The center provides a range of design and planning services for community such as engagement and visioning, master planning and project feasibility studies.
Lindsay, who represents Ward 7, said she’s seen what giving a neighborhood input in planning and asking questions such as “What would you like to see? How would this land be best used?’ can achieve.
David Turner, the owner of David Turner Companies and the project construction manager and general contractor for the Belhaven Town Center, brought in a design team to lead a collaborative process so that a new perspective could be envisioned beyond the institutional buildings and parking garage that were once on the town center site, she said.
The planning process plus rezoning for a mixed-use district paid off with the town center, a destination with some of the city’s most desirable activities and restaurants, possible, Lindsay said.
A similar planning process also went into the creation of The District at Eastover, another popular mixed-use district in the city, she said.
Lindsay believes neighborhoods should be proactive.
“Change is inevitable,” she said. “It’s either going to be good change or bad change. It is critically important that a community come together and plan for change, so it is good and meaningful, and it is change that they want.”
The word has gotten out about Fondren Forward and its intentions to move the neighborhood ahead, Carter said.
“People I’ve never known have come up to me and said, ‘What can I do to help?’” he said. “At the Jackson Food and Wine Festival, I had two people walk up to me and ask, ‘What can I do to help Fondren?’
“It’s been so rewarding, and I’ve met so many nice people. Jackson is full of so many nice people who want to see it get better.”
https://www.northsidesun.com/fondren...?e_term_id=120
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LOOKING AHEAD: LIBRARY SYSTEM HIRES COMPANY TO DEVELOP STRATEGIC PLAN
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A Saint Paul, Minnesota-based nonprofit that assists libraries in developing strategic plans has been hired to help the Jackson-Hinds Library System chart a new course.
The system’s board of trustees approved engaging the nonprofit Library Strategies to develop a strategic plan for the system and to provide a facilities masterplan, said Floyd Council, the system’s executive director.
The trustees approved spending “not to exceed $55,000” for the planning, he said.
“We do not know the final cost yet because we are likely to have savings from prior data gathering and background documents that we provided the company,” he said.
The planning process should launch in mid-March and be completed by June, Council said.
“What we’re wanting to know is, ‘How do you envision your future library?”’ Council said. “This is a data and community engagement process that will be powerful for our funders, the board of trustees and the community to determine the future.”
After a strategic plan is in place, the board of trustees will most likely adopt a new mission and vision statement for the system, Council said.
The implementation of plan that should result from the structured planning process is expected to take five years, he said.
Investing in a plan for the future is a positive step forward, said Virgi Lindsay, who represents Ward 7 on the Jackson City Council.
“You can’t figure out brick and mortar if you don’t know where you’re going,” she said. “You need a plan. If you don’t know what the needs are you can’t fix them.”
In recent years, the system has faced a challenge keeping branches open that have aging heating and cooling systems and other problems. By state law, the city or county is responsible for the maintenance of the buildings.
The Tisdale Library on Northside Drive was torn down after it fell into disrepair. The Eudora Welty Library on North State Street, once the flagship of the system, also fell into disrepair and is expected to be demolished this way to make way for a green space that will replace it. The Richard Wright Library in south Jackson is closed due to damage by vandals.
“There’s been so much focus on our facilities,” Council said. “The first thing we expect to hear is ‘We want y’all to fix the buildings.’ That will be in the action area of the strategic plan.”
To know exactly what is needed in terms of infrastructure, the system’s board of trustees hired Restoration One to assess each branch and complete a detailed report about each one, he said.
The opportunity to explore what a modern library can offer is a welcome one, Lindsay said. “Libraries are so much more than books on the shelves,” she said.
The Friends of the Saint Paul Public Library created Library Strategies about two decades ago to share their expertise and strengthen libraries across the country and Library Strategies is well versed in knowledge about up-to-date libraries, Council said. “They have created strategic plans for 40 to 50 library systems across the country,” he said.
A representative of Library Strategies spoke at a Mississippi Library Commission meeting that Council attended last fall and provided training for state library directors.
“During that time, our board was looking at companies and consultants who do strategic planning,” he said. “We took a look at 20 to 30.”
Currently, members of the strategic plan steering committee are being finalized, Council said. The committee will include a mix of representatives from the city of Jackson and Hinds County, which fund the system, as well as leaders from the city’s business community, Jackson public schools, Hinds County schools, the Jackson Friends of the Library and nonprofits the system partners with.
Three senior consultants from Library Strategies will lead the planning process, which will include online and “quick paper” surveys, community events and data analysis, Council said.
Council envisions several events throughout the city that the public could participate in as part of the planning process.
He would like for one event to be held at the Belhaven Town Center, with a community partner sponsoring refreshment, a live radio remote and “digital capture” as a quick and easy way for participants to provide their thoughts what they’d like to see in their library.
“A strategic plan without serious involvement from the community can be dead in the water,” Council said. “We want people in the community to help us and be part of this.”
The planning process will involve more than just public opinion but also consider funding (which is a weakness of the system), the number of library branches, the hours they’re open and even the question, “Do you think libraries are necessary,” he said.
Council said he cannot predict what will come out of the planning process but there are many possibilities, he said, mentioning a library that offers stationary bicycles so people can read and ride.
“You have to be willing to listen to the wildest of ideas,” he said.
Jane Alexander, a longtime Jackson resident and president and CEO of the Community Foundation for Mississippi, said the value of strategic planning is to help organizations look constructively and realistically at what they want to achieve in the future and includes practical steps to get there.
“Organizations need to take the time to either reset or just set their course,” she said. “Especially after times of chaos or difficulty, pausing to be deliberate and set a course will create the opportunity to hear from many perspectives and voices.
“Strategic planning can be internally focused, like how to comprise a board, what needs to change in governance or staffing models—that kind of thing. Questions can include ‘What do we need to do to be more effective’ or ‘How can we appeal to donors or clients better?’
“Strategic planning can be externally focused, and in that case, some attempt should be made to gather information and ideas from the public the organization serves. Questions like, ‘What would you like to see’ or ‘How can we serve you better’ are related to this.”
Alexander said there’s no doubt the Jackson-Hinds Library System faces challenges but planning can result in finding a better way forward.
“Diving deep into how to structure an organization to operate effectively, budget well and be realistic about what it can and cannot do is critically important,” she said. “At the same time, working with a consultant to explore what other systems are doing since many face the same challenges, imagine what’s possible and get public input on what they need from the system could be lead to transformation.”
Alexander said she hopes the planning approach that the Jackson-Hinds Library System uses will throw out preconceived ideas about what a library is and explore what it can be.
“As a community we can completely reimagine what we’re doing and create a vibrant, responsive library system,” she said. “Or, we can do nothing, which suggests it’s a problem too big for us to solve.
“I don’t like giving up and I believe the community won’t fail at this ‘big thinking.’”
https://www.northsidesun.com/local-c...&e_sort_order=
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NEIGHBORS PLAN TO APPEAL FAIRVIEW INN REZONING
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A couple opposed to the rezoning of a bed and breakfast in Belhaven plans to appeal the Jackson Planning Board’s decision if the Jackson City Council approves the zoning change. The planning board approved the rezoning of the Fairview Inn at 734 Fairview St. from R-2 (Single and Two-Family Residential District) to CMU-1 (Community Mixed-Use District, Pedestrian Friendly) during its me...
https://www.northsidesun.com/neighbo...&e_sort_order=
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