If you haven’t driven down what is officially State Highway 182 or Martin Luther King, Jr. Boulevard in Starkville recently you will be amazed at the difference a lot of grant money and sound vision and yes, sidewalks have made along that corridor.
In the 1950s and early 60s before bypass construction, the strip was a vibrant and active Highway 82. It held a status similar to that currently enjoyed by Highway 12 in Starkville.
The road was a main thoroughfare for traveling east to west and served as the “main drag” for the town. It was the first impression of Starkville for visitors. It was where the motels were, where the restaurants were, where Johnny Cash picked some flowers and got tanked for his efforts and generally where the town went for its activities other than local shopping on Main Street.
The Plantation Bell Motel better known now as the Regal Inn was where I could find my father and his friends for their early morning breakfast gossip and business ritual. It was at 82 and Old West Point Road and was the motel that anchored the east end of Starkville.
From there traveling west you could find a Sunflower which became Rick’s night club and Spiller furniture. Coleman’s barbecue at the corner of North Jackson and 182 has become a cleaners. There was Garrard Motor Company that sold cars and most recently was a trailer sales lot. There were a couple of service stations, one of which was a Texaco at the corner of Washington and 82. Where there is a pawn shop today, there was a Pic-Pac grocery and a very popular local diner that made a mean grilled cheese sandwich and had those old Orange Crush sodas in the brown bottles. A little farther down you could find The University motel and a restaurant called The Derby.
In the early 60s when the Highway 12 Bypass was built, it allowed travelers to skirt the MSU campus and with that it began to pull business away from 82. That change began a typical cycle of decline that comes with economic shifts in activity to newer opportunities. The ensuing 50 years have not been kind to the area. Most recently it has been the home of gas stations converted to all manner of uses, convenience stores, grocery stores and failed restaurants.
Doing something proactive with the area has been a focus of discussion for years. A number of MSU student projects have proposed ideas about how to turn the area around. Without the requisite funding nothing could or would take hold.
The city has made several abortive attempts to create focus in areas underneath the hill that is Main Street. The plans have gone anywhere from relocating a new city hall or municipal complex just off 182 joining the new electric department building to constructing a new police facility at the corner of 182 and Jackson. Neither of those ideas came to fruition.
Finally, thanks to Starkville’s own State Highway Commissioner Mike Tagert, Mayor Parker Wiseman and the previous Board of Aldermen working through our very capable city engineer and MDOT personnel, we are seeing some dynamic changes. The project has included milling down asphalt and adding a brand new overlay, restructuring and rearranging the access points into existing businesses and… wait for it…. the addition of SIDEWALKS. These changes have literally transformed an embarrassing section of road into the image of a cared for part of town. This isn’t another discourse on the importance of sidewalks, but truth is truth.
A change in zoning implemented a couple of years ago and this capital expenditure have resulted in the flow of investment dollars to that area.
While it is a truism that there are always cycles to life, I know from personal experience there are ways to mitigate the down cycle. Neglect breeds a rapid and steep decline to property values. It behooves Starkville or any community to establish disincentives for owners to let their properties become bad neighbors through neglect. It is even more important when those properties are, by their location, representative of the city as a whole.
Starkville deserves to have well-kept entrances to our community. Highway 182 is getting better and in doing so is fostering a pattern of redevelopment that will hopefully have a domino effect on the adjoining property owners. Revitalization of 182 is a goal that will reap rewards for the city. It takes vision and work and money and someone like Commissioner Tagert who cares about Starkville. This is another example where first impressions count. The changes to 182 greatly improve our ability to sell ourselves to ourselves as well as to the rest of the world.
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