CONTINUOUS GROWTH IN OKTIBBEHA COUNTY
FROM PLANNED BUILDING AND INFRASTRUCTURE PROJECTS THROUGHOUT THE CITY AND COUNTY TO POTENTIAL UPGRADES IN DOWNTOWN STARKVILLE, BIG DREAMS ARE COMING TO FRUITION AND MORE ARE DEVELOPING IN OKTIBBEHA COUNTY
RESIDENTIAL AND COMMERCIAL DEVELOPMENT
The Adelaide neighborhood will add 46 houses to the existing 51 in the third and largest phase of the development in South Starkville, west of South Montgomery Street.
Some of the houses in the second phase are still under construction, but all 51 houses have either residents or contracts in place, and one-third of the lots in phase three already have option contracts, said Saunders Ramsey, whose family owns the land and is developing Adelaide. Construction of the third phase, to the west of the existing houses, will begin this year.
Meanwhile, in downtown Starkville, the former home of Mugshots Grill and Bar at the northwest corner of Main and Washington streets has a potential new tenant for the first time in years.
Spring Street Cigars, headquartered in Tupelo, hopes to open its fifth location in the Mugshots building. Starkville aldermen voted to grant cigar lounges an exception to the city’s anti-smoking ordinance, which disallows smoking in most public spaces in the city.
The city is also considering allowing "brewpubs" - defined as establishments that brew and sell their own beer, light wine and light spirits - to operate without requiring food to account for at least 25 percent of their gross sales, in order to allow Spring Street Cigars to include a brewpub. Owner John Higgins said this would be the best use of the space in the building.
INFRASTRUCTURE PROJECTS AND GOALS
The Parks and Recreation department conducted a survey in December asking residents how often they use the city's parks, sidewalks and bicycle paths, how accessible they are and what the city could do to improve them. The data from the survey will help city officials to create a master plan for future sidewalks, bike paths and other pedestrian infrastructure.
Starkville received a grant of about $50,000, part of the National Recreation and Park Association's 10-Minute Walk Grant program, in September 2019 to fund both the study and the master plan.
The city's goals for sidewalk and bike path improvements go hand-in-hand with its street maintenance and improvement goals. City Engineer Edward Kemp presented a street maintenance policy to the board in October, with the roads that receive the most traffic and are most vital to connecting the city - such as Main, Jackson and Montgomery streets - set to receive maintenance first.
The heavily traveled bridge on Old West Point Road just south of Garrard Road is old and eroding, with the guardrails too close to the intersection, so Starkville will build a new bridge just south of its current location, using $1.34 million from the Emergency Road and Bridge Repair Fund within the Mississippi Department of Transportation. The city has until this summer to put forth a construction contract.
Meanwhile, the city and county agreed in the fall of 2020 to work together to clear debris out of Skinner Creek just south of the city limits. The Oktibbeha County board of supervisors voted in May to join the Tombigbee River Valley Water Management District, a Tupelo-based state agency that does flood control, cleanup and repair projects on waterways of all sizes in northeast Mississippi.
In December, the supervisors appointed David Kennard, the water management district’s former executive director, to represent the county on the agency’s board.
UPGRADES AND IMPROVEMENTS IN STRARKVILLE
Two months after suspending its recycling program, Starkville adopted a new one that officials expect to be more financially feasible.
In December, aldermen approved a contract with the Waste Pro USA office in Columbus to establish a drop-off site at the sanitation building on North Washington Street. The Waste Pro contract costs significantly less than the city’s previous one with Waste Management, which involved hauling the recyclable materials to Tupelo rather than Columbus.
Aldermen decided in October to ask the state Legislature to consider funding a project to relocate the Starkville-Oktibbeha Public Library from its longtime location on University Drive to the stretch of Highway 182 that will be revamped in the next few years with federal grant money.
Library system director Phillip Carter said he would appreciate having more parking and the ability to tailor a new building's design to the library's needs, if the Legislature agrees to fund it.
State Representative Rob Roberson (R-Starkville) encouraged the aldermen to request funding for a “big project,” saying that 2021 would be a good year to do so and that the city should make such requests annually to stay on the Legislature’s radar.
The board also will look into the options of bringing a YMCA to Starkville and extending Stark and Hospital roads to connect them to state highways on the west side of the city.
Additionally, downtown Starkville saw a new splash of color on the bridge on University Drive over the railroad tracks, just east of Old West Point Road. Bob Brzuszek, a landscape architecture professor at Mississippi State University, and two assistant artists, Anstacia Doughty and Joseph MacGown, painted the bridge after the Starkville Area Arts Council approved the design.
Doughty also painted a utility box on Lafayette Street, and she has painted several in Columbus as well.
STORY BY TESS VRBIN
PHOTOS BY DEANNA ROBINSON
