According to an email statement, Fondren Place (seen here) will be milled Monday, November 5 and Duling Avenue on Tuesday, November 6 in preparation for paving.

Fondren Renaissance says that long-awaited milling and paving work on Fondren Place and Duling Avenue will begin next week.

According to an email statement, Fondren Place will be milled Monday, November 5 and Duling Avenue on Tuesday, November 6.

On both streets, there will be limited access during milling. As soon as that work is complete, all access will be restored until paving begins.

“Paving on these streets will follow within a week of the streets being milled,” FRF explains.

During both phases – milling and paving – there will be no on-street parking on Fondren Place and Duling Avenue. Areas of parking will be marked off each day at 6 a.m. and notice made the night prior. Vehicles that remain parked on these streets will be towed, according to the release.

“An update regarding the paving times of Fondren Place and Duling Avenue will be issued on Wednesday, November 7,” FRF says.

The paving actually occurred November 15-17 after days of weather delays. The smooth streets, along with the rest of the business district, will be restriped as part of a “touch up” phase of the sidewalk enhancement grant project. 

Business Improvement District Designation Passes

Landowners overwhelmingly approved a proposal this week to tax themselves, all for the greater good of the downtown Fondren historic district.

Ballots were counted by the City Clerk at Jackson City Hall on Wednesday, October 31, 2018. The result was an 84 percent “for” vote to form the Fondren Business Improvement District, or BID, a process more than two years in the making. 

The Jackson City Council will make an official acceptance of the Fondren BID at its November 20 council meeting. Once the measure is accepted, a Fondren BID Board of Directors will be formed to begin finalizing the acceptance and appropriation of funds in accordance with the budget already set forth during the BID process. 

“We see a need for an entity to maintain certain factions of the neighborhood,” FRF Executive Director Jim Wilkirson told Find It In Fondren in 2016. “It could bring substantial savings to individual groups by putting services under one umbrella.”

Those services could include security; upkeep of common areas, landscaping and sidewalks; and hospitality “ambassadors” to make sure visitors find their way.

A BID is a defined area within which landowners are required to pay an assessment in order to fund projects within the district’s boundaries. The first BID in the United States was the Downtown Development District in New Orleans, established in 1974. There are currently 1,2000 such districts across the U.S. The closest to Fondren is in downtown Jackson, managed by Downtown Jackson Partners since 2009.

“We’re looking to do similar things,” Wilkirson noted at the time. “We’re not reinventing wheel. It’s proven it works.”