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City sparks: downtown Jackson on brink of big changes.

Article Excerpt
After years of a slow and steady recovery, downtown Jackson is on the cusp of a major transformation.

"The downtown office market as a whole is doing unbelievably well," said John Lawrence, president of Downtown Jackson Partners. "With 50% of Central Mississippi's office space--3.5 million square feet--downtown is consistently maintaining a 93% occupancy rate compared to 89% three years ago."

Easing parking woes

Parkway Properties, owner and manager of City Centre, formerly SkyTel Centre, broke ground June 15 for the construction of a new 517-space parking facility on Pascagoula Street, located across from Thalia Mara Hall. Even though the building will support City Centre tenants, it will also ease parking woes for the Mississippi Museum of Art, Davis Planetarium, the Arts Pavilion, the new Mississippi Telecommunications Training & Conference Center being built and the planned convention center. The parking garage is scheduled for completion by Jan. 1, 2005.

"The parking garage is really going to clean up and aesthetically improve this part of downtown while providing needed parking for the 260,000-square-foot office property," said Lawrence.

Construction of the new parking garage is also in response to the new leases Parkway recently closed. Last November, SkyTel employees relocated to the Clinton headquarters following WorldCom's bankruptcy, leaving SkyTel Centre with a 26% occupancy. In the last six months, Parkway has raised the occupancy to more than 90%, necessitating additional parking in the area.

"We were concerned, like anyone would be, when WorldCom moved out," said Parkway Properties CEO Steve Rodgers. "But our staff did a bang-up job of getting Forman Perry, Ross & Yerger and Sweet & Freese into the City Centre building. Phelps Dunbar expanded about 90,000 square feet, and other customers renewed. It's moved the needle on occupancy nicely. Now, the CBD (central business district) is 7.2% vacant, and that's mostly due to expansions by professional firms, compared to the national CBD level of 14.5%."

Garages are rarely built by private entities because...

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