NATCHEZ — Some people don’t like to talk about the fact that Natchez’s historic downtown district has a number of empty buildings.

But not Ruth Nichols. She — along with Natchez Inc. Project Manager Chris Hinton and a half-dozen partner organizations — plans to tell the region about those buildings.

Natchez Inc., Alcorn State University, the Mississippi Development Authority and the Mississippi Main Street Association will launch the “Possibilities Tour: Turning Deserted Spaces into Dynamic Places” in Natchez this fall.

The goal of the tour is simple — advertise heavily the empty spaces in downtown Natchez to a regional audience, and then have a day — Nov. 9 — in which prospects from across Mississippi, Louisiana, Tennessee and Alabama can come and tour those buildings.

If it pays off, those spaces will be filled.

“We want to bring people into downtown Natchez,” Hinton said. “Our local residents, Mississippians as a whole, people from our bordering states — we want them to come and see what a treasure we have here.”

The idea for the tour was conceived July 4, when Nichols — Alcorn’s vice president for educational and community partnership — took the opportunity to walk Main and Franklin streets.  She counted 38 empty buildings.

“I had no idea it was that many buildings,” Nichols said. “Every economic development publication you read, you read about cities trying to revitalize their downtown, and this is our effort to do that — the downtown area is vitally important to every city.”

Hinton said whenever Natchez Inc. brings an economic development prospect to the city the organization takes that prospect on a tour of the downtown area.

“The more developed our downtown is, the more viable our town looks to our prospects,” he said.

To get the word out about the possibilities tour, the Natchez-Adams County Chamber of Commerce will advertise the tour with the other chambers of commerce around the state, Natchez Inc. will do the same with other economic development agencies and Natchez Inc. Chair Sue Stedman — who is a realtor — will push the initiative through the Mississippi state realtor’s association, Nichols said.

Local architect Johnny Waycaster has agreed to draw designs for possible uses of the properties in advance of the events, Hinton said. The designs will be on display in the spaces during the tour.

“When the people tour those spaces, they will be coming in and seeing the building as it is, but they will also have a visual concept of what it can be,” Hinton said.

The Mississippi Development Authority is also part of the partnership, Nichols said, and other cities will follow Natchez with their own possibilities tours.

“We are hoping people from other communities come and see what we are doing and take it home and copy it — as long as we’re first,” Nichols said.

The tour won’t showcase every empty building in downtown. Instead, it will focus on properties listed with local realtors, 12 so far. The realtors will be headquartered at Crye-Leike Stedman Realtors and will be on duty in the properties during the tour.

“If I was the owner of a building and I wasn’t linked to a realtor, I would have my building open that day anyway,” Nichols said.

The tour will coincide with the Natchez chili cook-off, Angels on the Bluff, the Natchez Antiques Forum, Natchez Second Saturday, the Kauffman Foundation’s Startup Weekend and the Veteran’s Day Parade, all of which will be in the downtown area.

“We will be inviting people when they leave those things to come on the tour,” Hinton said.

For more information, visit www.natchezinc.com or contact Hinton at (601) 445-0288.