Margaret Martin School, the beautiful building that has dominated a stretch of Homochitto Street since its construction just before the Great Depression, may symbolize a crossroads for Natchez.

Natchez has changed in recent years and not necessarily for the better. Industries have closed, many following global shifts in the business world. As a result the area’s population has diminished by several thousand residents in the last two decades.

The loss of population doesn’t simply limit the number of people on the streets; it affects everything in the community.

The population declines result in fewer residents who have health insurance coverage, who have good wages, who contribute to the local economy, buy local goods and pay local taxes.

All of those factors may, in part, be how Natchez has wound up in its current position.

The City of Natchez is in need of millions and millions of dollars if it hopes to keep the city and all of its public properties in pristine order.

The city owns several old, no longer viable for modern education, school buildings, at least one old hospital building, a train depot and acres of random spots of land, each with a long list of issues that need to be addressed.

All of that is on top of the normal wear and tear on city infrastructure — road, sidewalks, streetlights, etc.

So it’s no surprise that city leaders are working to unload public properties.

Mayor Butch Brown said approximately $500,000 in public properties were sold in the last year or so. Those included land adjacent to the Margaret Martin School and the former Coca-Cola building on the corner of Wall and Monroe streets.

In the last two weeks the public has learned the city — or at least a small handful of city leaders — has been in talks with a developer who may seek to purchase the former Margaret Martin School and the former Natchez General Hospital.

Both buildings would be turned into housing developments if the city agrees to sell the properties and if all the necessary approvals are provided.

Both buildings have seen better days and both would require millions to repair ongoing maintenance issues and fully restore them to pristine condition.

So the option of selling the buildings to a developer seems to make logical sense from the city’s perspective. Selling away the problems rids the city of the head-scratching conundrums facing its leaders — how does the city deal with crumbling infrastructure without massively raising taxes to create a funding source?

It’s a fair and difficult to answer question.

Does Natchez need to simply hunker down and find the money necessary to fix public properties, even if it means significant tax increases?

Or do city residents simply need to realize that not every historic structure can feasibly be saved?

One local resident recently suggested publicly the old buildings should be razed, clearing the way for new development. While that’s certainly an option, it would seem a last resort.

That said, for years, the city has been unable to keep the most basic of infrastructure, roads and sidewalks, consistently maintained and in good order.

Perhaps the plans for Margaret Martin and the old Natchez General Hospital building are indeed the highest and best use of the land and perhaps the best option to allow the buildings to have a new lease on life.

But the city would be wise to simply collect all potential developer plans for the buildings along with estimates of what it would take for the city to revamp the buildings on the public’s dime.

Knowing both sides of the equation — including the personal costs to individual taxpayers — residents may be in a better position to provide well informed, reasoned feedback to city leaders.

To not do that is to continue a process of having a small handful of people make decisions that affect Natchez’s future for decades to come.

 

Kevin Cooper is publisher of The Natchez Democrat. He can be reached at 601-445-3539 or kevin.cooper@natchezdemocrat.com.