Cherry Valley Renovations

Update on Cherry Valley Park. The city has installed a gate that will be closed at night after events end for the day. A fence has been installed around the cove on Cherry Valley Drive (there will be a pedestrian entrance there) when finished. New lighting and security cameras will be installed soon, and the parking lot will be paved. The skate park is almost finished and should be a fun addition to the park. All part of the over-million-dollar improvements at the park. Police will enforce the no ATVs in the park…

 

Happy Thanksgiving Southaven

Another Thanksgiving successfully celebrated! We had a fantastic day delivering over 150 Thanksgiving meals to our first responders and folks that just needed a little attention for the Holiday. None of it could have happened without my good friends at 10th Inning who prepared and donated the meals, Alderman Judy Lewis and Dawn Lebo Bartolotta for the homebaked cakes and pies and David Aubert for helping me get everything delivered. This operation was in addition to the project to provide turkey dinners to 10 of our local families – thanks to Paul Houck for providing the turkeys, Dawn Lebo Bartolotta for the home baked pies and my wife, Marie, for helping to pull it all together.

10 Years Keeping The Neighborhood Safe

Another great Halloween for the Colonial Hills Neighborhood Watch Patrol. For the last 10 years members from the Neighborhood Watch patrolled the neighborhood  keeping the children safe and passing out candy.

Thanks Ron, David and Barrett for your help this year.

Ron Magee, David Aubert, Charlie Hoots Neighborhood Watch Founder  and Barrett Wilkinson

New Playground At Cherry Valley Park

New playground equipment is being install at Cherry Valley Park. This is a over 100,000 dollar investment in our neighborhoods.
The playground is just part of the 2 million dollar park expansion at Cherry Valley. New fences and walking trails have already been installed.
The pump track and skate park construction will be starting soon and should be open by the summer.
We are on a roll in the West Side and looking for more to come…

New Vacuum Truck To Help Keep Our Streets Clean

This is something I have been working on for over two years, this will be a great addition to keeping our streets clean. Thanks to the Mayor and Aldermen for supporting me with this project.
(Statement from Mayor Musselwhite,)
Today, my Public Works teammates Will McCoy and Robert Booth turned the key for the first time in our city’s history to our new vacuum truck. We’ve come a long way in beautifying our city, but we’ve been missing this expensive tool to clean our intersections. After car accidents and sand being placed during winter weather conditions, an accumulation of debris occurs. It’s labor intensive to manually clean so many intersections in our city. This new truck is amazing with its power and efficiency.
The City paid $198,000 for this truck and it is officially in action starting today at Rasco/Airways. Thanks to Alderman Hoots for his diligence with this endeavor and our entire Board of Aldermen for sharing and supporting my lofty beautification goals.
Let’s get pretty in Southaven!
#hootsworkingforyou

The Hole Has A New Name

We renamed the city park on Caprock Cove Jerry Street Field, you may remember it has been called “The Hole” for years.

In the 80’s the park was used for church league softball games. Jerry was killed in a car wreck in 1986 after the high school prom.

Jerry was very active in the church league and played for Greenbrook Baptist Church and was loved by many in the neighborhood.

It was a privilege for all of us on the Board of Aldermen to make this change.

2 Million Dollar Investment Coming To Cherry Valley Park.

We are building a new bike track and skate park at Cherry Valley park as part of my hard work to revitalize our neighborhood parks.

The skate park will be larger than the old we had on Rasco and the new bike track will be one of the new “Pump Tracks” with slops and banked asphalt tracks to increase speeds. It’s the latest trend in bike tracks. We will also be updating the lighting and putting in a new playground. 

The park will have cameras and gates and will close at sunset when not in use.

This is over a 2 million dollar investment in our ward and the west side of Southaven. #hootsworkingforyou 

New Business Coming To Main Street

Great things are coming to the West Side of our city, the best is yet to come… This is a story from DeSoto Times Tribune about our latest development.

The former El Patron building at 920 Stateline Road will be renovated into an American Deli using available tax credits to help spur redevelopment in the city’s West End

Southaven this week approved an application for a tax incentive for a renovation project at 920 Stateline Road. The former El Patron Mexican restaurant building will be rehabbed and turned into an American Deli.

Planning Director Whitney Choat-Cook said the developers have been working with her office and the fire department to come up with a renovation plan to repurpose the structure rather than tear it down.

“It has been determined by the fire department that it can be renovated as opposed to being torn down,” Choat-Cook said. “That is the option they would like to go with.”

Chiat-Cook said developers will make use of credits under the city’s West End Tax Incentive Program to make interior structural improvements, have new roofing, new exterior painting, landscaping, and a resurfaced parking lot.

“It looks like this is about a $500,000 investment,” Choat-Cook said.

Mayor Darren Musselwhite said the investment represents another success story in their efforts to revitalize the original business district. He recently announced a new push by the city to stir up interest among developers and property owners to invest in the downtown area.

“Here we go, one by one” Musselwhite said. “It doesn’t happen overnight, but we have our incentive package that we are really trying to step up and market even more. We had the Wendy’s a few years ago. This building has been so many things over the years, so to have this kind of investment here is so good for our original  business district and the West End. I just want to publicly thank the  investors for doing this. We welcome American Deli there.”

Chiat-Cook said they had other developers look at the building before, but none wanted to put the kind of money into the building that it would need.

“There is a lot of work that needs to be done there,” Choat-Cook said. “Before this one even came into play, we had several others look at this but not wanting what was going to be required by the fire and building department. It’s an overhaul. It’s everything from new windows. There is a massive amount of plumbing and HVAC that has to be  done. The parking lot is a mess. There is no landscaping. They have already taken off the front portion of the building so they can open it back up. It was a disaster in the interior.”

Choat-Cook said developers actually started working heavily on it prior to talking to her office. They put a stop on it to meet with the developers to see if the building was even worth saving.

“One of the investors has another business on Southview St. right behind it,” Choat-Cook said. “He found an outside investor to go in on it with him because he wanted to revamp it and make it an area  for his employee to go. So it is a local investment.”

Musselwhite said it is a very worthy project and will add a lot to the area. American Deli specializes in burgers, wings, sandwiches, salads, subs, and gyros and has over 200 locations nationwide.

“And every incentive allowed by state law is in place to bring business back to our  original business district,” Musselwhite said. “I think it is a great thing .”