Biloxi Community Development building new entertainment sector
BILOX, Miss. (WXXV)- Fourteen years after a fire in downtown Biloxi destroyed three businesses, the vacant lot at 781 Howard Avenue is set to come back to life.
Biloxi Community Director Jerry Creel said, “This is the location where the old Spanish Trail books used to be located. You can recall that building burned down several years ago. And up until now it’s been kind of a green space where they’ve had some kind of park activities on it. Essentially, what it will be is an area, two story, with a balcony facing Howard Avenue and it will have a walkway coming into from Howard and a walkway coming in from George Ohr into a courtyard area where there will be a fountain and landscaping. And it’ll just be kind of activity gathering spot where they’ll have some places to eat, some places to drink and some places to get together there.”
With the use of shipping containers, soon downtown Biloxi will be feeling like New Orleans. “We wanna have that old Biloxi look, you know that French Quarter type look on these buildings, that’s one of the things that we highly encouraged them to do. We think this is a great use of the property, and great use of container structures you know to make a project work and I think it’s going to be a big, big deal for downtown.”
It’s all a part of Biloxi’s plan to rejuvenate its downtown. “One of the visions that the mayor had, he wants to get us back to the point in downtown where you see people walking up and down everything street down there you know because there’s so many things to do. We are getting there. We’ve got the Saenger Theatre, we’ve got the Barq’s Building under construction, we’ve already added a couple of developments down there with the Mardi Gras Museum and some construction offices with apartments above it. You’re really starting to see people locate there, locate businesses there that create that create that activity where there is a reason to walk around again.”
We will keep you update as Austin Square continues to be developed.
