For the past four years, officials from the City of Hattiesburg and partnering organizations have made plans for more than $55 million in projects throughout the Hall Avenue and East Hardy Street corridors, including two new railway overpasses and a new multi-million-dollar complex.
To seek residents’ input about even more future growth in those areas, officials are launching a public engagement phase for ideas on economic development, redevelopment and creative place-making opportunities in those areas. During that process, residents will have the opportunity to participate in a variety of online and in-person feedback methods on the matter.
“If you look at all of those areas, there are very different segments of that corridor,” said Andrew Ellard, director of the Hattiesburg Urban Development Department. “We have a lot of different planning characteristics to take into account; there’s a lot of residential neighborhoods, there’s a lot of commercial corridor segments, and historic district properties that are properties in the flood zone.
“So there’s a lot of things to take into consideration, and we’re just eager to make contact with as many of the neighborhood residents as possible, stakeholders and business owners in the area. We want to kind of capture their vision for what the area could be in the future.”
Officials plan to begin the first tier of community engagement by November or December. To participate, residents can visit www.hattiesburgms.com/buildingopportunities or send questions or concerns to planning@hattiesburgms.com.
“There’s some FAQs there, and also some information about some of the infrastructure projects (we have going on),” Ellard said. “As this project moves forward, we’ll obviously update that page, and there will be several outreach opportunities for the community.
“The first, or largest, will probably come in late November or early December, when we have some public workshops. Up until that point, we’re kind of reaching out to key stakeholders in the neighborhoods, business owners, church leaders, neighborhood association leaders, in a fact-finding stage.”
After the initial stage, consultants will gather the feedback, and officials will use that data to recommend changes in the zoning regulations in the two corridors, in order to support and enhance the quality of life in those neighborhoods.
“We’ll work through whatever that input is,” Ellard said. “It’s hard to tell until we get some of that input, but whatever the vision is from the community, the next step is (to figure out) how to accomplish that, in terms of zoning code.
“A good reference point, I would say, is midtown, because there was a long engagement process in that concept. In the end, it resulted in a code to kind of define the development of that area. I think the intention here is to do something similar in that regard – not in how it looks, but what the community feels like the vision should be.”
