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PAUL:

Working eight days a week might sound impossible, but Liz Brister has somehow figured out how to squeeze an extra day into every week to transform downtown Jackson. Hey, it's Paul Wolf with the front row seat to conversations on culture from Jackson, Mississippi. We call our podcast Soul Sessions. It's the people, places and events that make the city with soul shine. On today's show, we're chatting with Liz Brister, the Dynamo president of Downtown Jackson Partners, has been leading the charge to change perceptions about our capital city's core since February. From sunrise workouts at Pinnacle Green to five course dinners under Harvest Moon's in Smith Park, Liz is proving downtown Jackson isn't just Mississippi's urban heartbeat. It's a place worth falling in love with all over again.

For some reason, downtown's just kind of gotten a bad rap. And I hate that it's an unjust bad rap because Downtown is the heart of the capital city. It's the heart of Mississippi, which I know you like to say, and I think you're doing some amazing work to help try to change the perception of downtown Jackson, Mississippi.

LIZ:

Thank you. Yes. It's a beautiful area. First of all, I mean, architecturally, there's so many significant buildings in this small space that we have that we call downtown. It packs quite a punch. And it's the only city in our state over a hundred thousand. It's the only urban area in our state. So it truly is Mississippi's downtown. And I think the bad rap came from safety issues that really don't exist now. I mean, we have the Capitol police. It is the most safe zip code in the city. It's really, I think, like you said, it's a bad rap. It's myth. It's not reality, but we're working to show people. want to take those concerns seriously. So we're working to show people when you do come downtown, you're going to have an incredible experience. You will be safe and you'll get to experience what it's like to be part of our capital city. The only major urban site in our state.

PAUL:

Liz, you've been the president of downtown Jackson Partners now for how long?

LIZ:

Since February. what is that? Seven, eight months, something like that, less than a year.

PAUL:

And you hit the ground running. Let me tell you, when I started seeing all of the amazing work that was being done by downtown Jackson partners, I thought, when do you have time to sleep? Well, I tell everyone, if you know the old Beatles song, eight days a week, that's me. That's my life. I work eight days a week. I really do. I don't think I've had a day off since I started.

PAUL:

Liz, you retired from your former career to take on a whole new mission. And I have to preface that by saying you're not new to trying to make a change in the community. You have a boutique design business that I'll let you give an elevator pitch for design for good.

LIZ:

Sure. Yeah. I don't need any more clients. I don't mind doing the pitch. Do not apply. No. thank you! That's very nice of you to mention that it all came to my neighborhood roots and concern about my neighborhood and seeing houses in I live in Fondren in Jackson and I kept seeing houses being purchased by out of state investors and what would happen after they would buy the houses was never good. And that is my mission and my cause. And so I started trying to buy the houses was a little bit of the David and Goliath story, but just kind of on a retail basis, one at a time, I started buying houses and renovating them. But I guess you could say that created a pathway for me to land where I am now in downtown out of just concern for our community and also seeing the potential of our community. I mean, houses that a lot of people would tell me needed to be torn down. We renovated and they have homeowners living in them now and they're beautiful places to be in our neighborhood. And I feel the same way about downtown. Nothing in this built environment is worth giving up on. We've got a lot of potential. It just needs some love, some elbow grease, and we need people to embrace it. We definitely want to change hearts and minds to love our downtown again.

PAUL:

I keep mentioning downtown Jackson Partners, and I know that may go over some folks’ heads. You know, what is this organization? What is your mission and how long have you been serving downtown Jackson?

LIZ:

I'm not even sure I understood what it was until I took this job. We are a business improvement district, which is set up by legislation. So the state of Mississippi passed a law back in the early nineties that you could tax parcels in a particular community and the property owners have to vote. They have to agree that they want to do this. majority has to agree. And when they do agree, all the property owners within that boundary pay an additional tax that goes to fund the business improvement district. So, Downtown Jackson Partners is the oldest business improvement district in the state. We are also the largest business improvement district in the state. There are two others, all in Jackson, Fondren Business Improvement District, and then LeFleur East is the newest one. It really gives you an opportunity to invest back in things like beautification, like safety, to really create our communities around our state as places where we want people to live, work, and play. And we're all connected in that. I tell everyone, Jackson is probably the first place anyone's going to come when they come to this state. It's where the major airport is. So when you fly into Jackson, you want people to have a good experience here. And because it's the largest commercial district, they may have their first job here. So you want all the experiences to be good in Jackson because it might lead to a move later down the road to another part of our state. So what happens in Jackson to me is very important to what happens throughout our state.

PAUL:

This past summer, Downtown Jackson Partners put on a host of events at Smith Park and some of them got rained out and you had an amazing rain plan space with Union Market there at Mill and Capitol Street, but very specifically the Smith Park events, I think really awakened a passion in people to come downtown, experience live jazz music at lunch or food trucks or wine dinners in Smith Park. Those events kind of in a different form will continue into the fall. Tell me what you have planned for the next several months.

LIZ:

Well, with each season we're adding to the repertoire. So we have added and we have five different opportunities. Some of them are weekly, some of them are one time, but we're kicking it off with our Around the World Wednesdays, 11:30 to 1:00, with live music and food trucks with this international theme and a chance to win some tickets and other prizes. You will get a passport. And if you go eat at one of our international cuisine food trucks, you will get a stamp on your passport with a chance to win two round-trip tickets. We're trying to help people travel, but enjoy downtown and enjoy some different types of cuisine. We're going to have some Caribbean, some African, some Latin, a lot of different types of cuisine through October 29.

Then on Fridays, we are going to have a sunrise workout downtown, Sunrise Shape Up and it's going to be at the beautiful Pinnacle Green, a really pretty green space surrounded by rose bushes behind the Pinnacle Building on Capitol Street. There is the historic marker there for the old Woolworth’s counter. And we're gonna throw out our yoga mats and Downtown Fitness is gonna lead it from 6:00 to 6:45. It is an eight-week shape up. So if you just wanna get healthy or maybe you've got a wedding in your future and you're trying to get shaped up for that or whatever your reason might be, come on out and join us. And during that eight-week period, you will have access to the Downtown Fitness Gym.

Following that, we have a Sunday Stroll. And Sunday Stroll will be a bike ride through Downtown Jackson. And again, just trying to activate some spaces in Downtown or refresh all of us about what we really have to offer Downtown. So the bike ride will meet at the Welcome to Jackson sign on Sundays, the second Sunday of every month. It's a leisurely stroll. You don't have to wear the fancy bike pants. can just wear your shorts and your tennis shoes. Do wear a helmet for safety. And we'll be taking bike riders through a path o downtown. And along the way, there will be some special guests and speakers that will teach us about some of the architectural treasures and some of the history that we have in downtown.

And then October 4th, we're having Barktober Fest at the Mississippi Museum of Art Art Garden. And this will be a fest for the whole family, including your furry friends, your animals, your pets. So dress up your dogs in Halloween costumes. It is the month of October. We will have a photo booth where you can get some photos made of your animals. We'll have food trucks. We will have a beer garden. It's going to be a lot of fun. And of course, live music. Everything we do, we want to really highlight live music and the talent that we have in the community.

And then wrapping things up, we will have the first Smith Park Supper Club. Now we toyed with this idea and it was very successful over the summer when we did Thursday Unwind, which was a wine and a catered picnic basket with live jazz. This is going to be more of a white cloth event and we will have five courses. The first one of supper clubs is being hosted by Chefs Damien Cavicchi and Hunter Evans under the stars, under a harvest moon actually, because we will have a harvest moon the same night and some live music there as well. In fact, we've already selected the band. It's going to be Tim Avalon, who's very known, I know, in this community. He's got a new group called Big Easy Three and they will be playing and we'll have this lovely five course meal from 6:00 to 9:00 and Smith Park Supper Club is here to stay. With every season you can expect a new Smith Park supper club. It's going to be an exclusive group. Only 75 tickets will be sold this summer. When we tried this, everything was sold out. It was really successful. People will come downtown­—and at night—and you will have an experience like no other.

PAUL:

I ask again, Liz, when do you sleep?

LIZ:

Eight days a week, baby.

PAUL:

Let's talk about another big event going on in downtown Jackson in November. And how about the National Folk Festival coming to Jackson for the first time ever?

LIZ:

It's really exciting. And I've heard many of the National Folk Festival organizers say that when they have this event in other states, it's been around for 80 plus years. When it's in other states, the musicians are all traveling for Mississippi to come there because we own so much of the music that's in this country. It's who we are. It's in our DNA. So finally, we get the Folk Festival in our backyard and certainly we'll showcase our musicians and our talent that are unique to Mississippi, but we'll have other musicians and art forms from around the country. This is a big moment for Jackson and it's going to be here for three years. So this is really exciting and it's an opportunity for us to put our best foot forward and just brings some new life and vitality to downtown. A lot of people keep bringing up Jubilee Jam and they have fond memories. If you've been around that long of what Jubilee Jam brought to our city, I think these are the steps that lead towards that sort of experience again.

PAUL:

Let me ask you one last question: if you could look ahead five years, 10 years from now and listen—we won't hold you to any of these things—but just dream big. What do you see for downtown?

LIZ:

I think a lot of things will be different and I know it will happen. It's not just a dream. One of the foundational elements of that change is going to be the approval of the Pearl River Revitalization Plan. That's going to open up waterfront opportunities for downtown Jackson. Think about some other cities where you've seen that type of waterfront development. Little Rock, Chattanooga—there are other places—where you'll have a marina, you'll have boats, you'll have businesses, you'll have walking trails.And we've already got our wonderful Museum Trail. All of these things will really be elevated and we'll just have more businesses and more activity and more vibrancy. I also know that one of the other things that's fueling change is residential conversion of commercial office buildings, and we see that already underway. The old Deposit Guaranty building on Capitol Street has started construction. It will bring 155 new upscale apartment buildings to downtown Jackson. And so we can expect another 200 residents living downtown. We have about 700 now. So we'll be knocking on a thousand when that project is done. And I think that just showing the viability of these types of projects, it will start to take off after that. And when we start to get two or 3,000 people living downtown, it's just going to mean more restaurants, more nightlife, more breweries, hopefully, and other opportunities that you might travel out of state to have this type of experience. We wanna create that type of experience here. I can see it, it's happening. And we need everybody rowing the boat in the same direction. We need people to support this effort and to come downtown now and to show that we all share this vision and we believe that it can happen.

PAUL:

Inspiring convo there with Liz Brister about the Renaissance happening right here in the heart of our capital city. From Around the World Wednesdays to sunrise workouts at Pinnacle Green, from the upcoming National Folk Festival to those elegant Smith Park Supper Clubs under harvest moons, Liz and Downtown Jackson Partners are creating experiences that change perceptions and build lasting memories. As Liz said, we all need to be rowing in the same direction and events like these are exactly how we build momentum to make downtown Jackson the vibrant urban center we know it can become. We'll have links in our show notes to all of these events and more at visitjackson.com/soulsessions. This podcast is produced by Visit Jackson, the destination organization for Mississippi's capital city. Our executive producers are Jonathan Pettus and Dr. Ricky Thigpen and I'm our managing editor. You can learn more about all of the great things going on all over the city of Jackson by checking us out at visitjackson.com.

I'm Paul Wolf and you've been listening to Soul Sessions.

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