To the Editor:
Kosciusko’s antiquated business model inexplicably results in many local businesses closed for up to 50% of peak retailing hours. Stores that close half of Saturday and all day Sunday are doing a disservice to the general public, especially if at 1 p.m. on a Saturday you suddenly need something from a hardware store. The town center is a ghost town on Sunday, one of the most profitable retail days of the week.
The downtown business district is a strip center in the shape of a square and, with the possible exception of the ill-fated Native American Museum, the infrastructure of the town center seems to be pretty good. If the museum site doesn’t end up being an empty concrete slab, it could be an asset to the area. However, to think that it would attract the numbers of people necessary to provide a customer base for the surrounding businesses is probably overly optimistic.
One of my past experiences was as a vendor of high end Navajo jewelry to number of Native American museums. We went to the Gilcrease in Tulsa, the Eiteljorg in Indy, the Pequot Indian Museum in Mashantucket, CT., and many others.
A common factor was that they were endowed by very wealthy people or supported by tribes with a lot of casino money. In order to supplement ticket sales, they all host frequent fundraising events to solicit donations and sell memberships.
The bottom line is that the Square needs an anchor with much greater drawing power than a small museum in order to fill the empty storefronts and support the surrounding business district. One thing stands out as having the potential to drive this kind of traffic, albeit on a seasonal basis, and that is entertainment. After all, we are in the “Hospitality State”, so why not sell FUN! (“There’s a whole lot of things I never done, but I ain’t never had too much fun!” - Commander Cody)
There are enough open spaces on the Square and in the immediate vicinity that could be utilized for a concert series between Memorial Day and Labor Day that could feature a series of weekly events with different genres on different nights of the week. It would have to be touring performers with the drawing power to sell tickets. Smaller related events could be hosted by the Barristers Hall or the Strand Theatre.
The Natchez Trace Festival is the only event that pulls folks in from an extended area and even that event could use some fine tuning. It should be a three-day fest with a more professional entertainment lineup. I cringed when I heard a little 7- or 8-year-old girl singing an “age inappropriate” song, “Rock me mama like a wagon wheel”!
Maybe a beer distributor could sponsor an entertainment area with a “Beer Garden” for those over 21 adjacent to an “all ages” area. I suggest an entertainment strategy of a “secular Saturday,” featuring popular genres and a “sermonizing Sunday” for a more spiritual focus. When I went to the Fall Festival last year, I drove by ball parks with hundreds of cars. The Fest was sparsely attended. If that is the norm, maybe that event should be moved to the ball field area and capitalize on that captive audience.
We have other area assets that — due to some huge mistakes of the past — have resulted in the lack of public access and use. Two of them are the Watershed Lake south of Kosciusko and the grossly under-utilized Whippet Stadium.
The Watershed Lake is hundreds of acres of water surrounded by desolate forest land. There is no reason not to “public domain” a large part of this area and open it up to fishing, camping and boating.
Whippet Stadium is too good a facility to have it sit idle for seven or eight months out of the year. Ticketed events could attract masses of people from a wide surrounding area. It’s obvious that placing the stadium there destroyed the Central Mississippi Fair and at the very least, it should be used to host ticketed events during the fair to help revive that event.
It is encouraging that the powers that be in Kosciusko are trying to bring much needed change to the city center, but a lot more needs to be done to “hire” public servants that have the vision and fortitude to do whatever is necessary to push for change.
The stadium and watershed are no-brainers and those mistakes should be corrected ASAP.
At any rate, those are my ideas, and hopefully other folks will have other ideas and maybe we will see the kind of changes that will create many opportunities and many great jobs.
(By the way…I think there is a great opportunity for an entrepreneur to open a small espresso/coffee shop on the Square that serves breakfast sandwiches and lunch! I’m too old!)
Dana Gwin
Kosciusko
