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Mayor attends institute: Brown gets feedback on tricentennial plans

Published 12:02am Friday, November 16, 2012

NATCHEZ — The city’s 2016 tricentennial plans are getting a little help from a panel of experts at Tulane University this week.

Mayor Butch Brown is attending the Mayors’ Institute on City Design at the Tulane Regional Urban Design Center, where he will present the plans for the city’s “legacy projects” for the tricentennial. Experts in city planning, preservation, design and other fields will provide feedback on the plans.

Brown is among several other mayors across the Southeast who were invited to the institute. According to Tulane Regional Urban Design Center’s website, the center’s staff will visit each participating city and “guide the mayors in selecting and presenting design challenges from their respective cities, ensuring that each project presented is met with appropriate design and policy solutions from the assembled expert panel.”

Brown said he is presenting the city’s plans for the bluff, which include renovating the depot and repurposing it for a farmer’s market, a retail shop for the market, gardens and a playground.

The challenge for the plans, Brown said, is getting them completed quickly for the tricentennial.

“That is what (the experts) will be advising me on,” he said.

The highlight of the conference, Brown said, will be that expert feedback he receives for the tricentennial plans.

“They will quickly (say) you should be working on this not that or you should consider this before you consider that,” he said.

Brown said the feedback would be similar to what the city would get if it hired a consultant to review the plans.

“But here we have about 12 to 15 professionals in separate issue areas,” he said.

Brown said the conference is invite-only, and all expenses are covered by the institute.

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  • Anonymous

    Please be sure to point out to the panel that the farmer’s market has failed here twice before, and that the proposal will be occupying prime real estate in a tourist area and on one fringe rather than a central area of the countywide area, thus not readily accessible by all county residents.

  • Khakirat

    I feel the farmers market should stay out on the liberty road assess area for tourist aren’t interested in produce.I hope that the county don’t get into a expensive to do situation with 2016 for working people could care less!! Also, let the people have their bluff property back that by law in the 1800s’ was put into law saying it belongs to the people not politicians!!!

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