2022 APA MISSISSIPPI CHAPTER AWARDS

 The American Planning Association Mississippi Chapter (APA Mississippi) honors innovative planning efforts and inspiring individuals with its 2021 Annual Awards. APA Mississippi’s awards program is a proud tradition established to recognize outstanding community plans, planning programs and initiatives, public education efforts, and individuals for their leadership on planning issues. These efforts help create communities of lasting value throughout the state.

These awards are selected through a juried process and will be awarded at the October Annual Alabama/Mississippi Joint Conference Awards Program.

Past winners can be viewed on our 2017 Chapter Awards Page, 2018 Chapter Awards Page and 2019 Chapter Awards Page.

These awards are selected through a juried process and were awarded at the October 25th, 2022 Annual Alabama/Mississippi Joint Conference Awards Luncheon.

2022 APA Mississippi Chapter Awards winners are:

• Best Public Outreach – The Mississippi Main Street Association is awarded the 2022 award for a Public Outreach effort for its 2022 Work Plan Workshop Series.  The coronavirus pandemic had a significant impact on how many local Main Street organizations function in their communities.  As they strive to understand the impacts of the coronavirus on their local economies, they have responded by adapting their economic and community development strategies.  Although long-term strategic planning is needed, the immediate need was updated work plans for 2022.   In response to that need, throughout 2022, the Mississippi Main Street Association (MMSA), supported by the Kellogg Foundation, implemented Work Plan Workshops in the 25 Main Street programs in communities across Mississippi. 

The MMSA team, led by Director Thomas Gregory, worked with Randy Wilson of Community Design Solutions to facilitate a series of one-day community engagement workshops with groups of stakeholders in the 25 communities. Dr. Rachael Carter with the Mississippi State University Extension conducted an online survey in each community prior to the on-site facilitation to help inform community engagement.  

MMSA uses time-tested Main Street Approach organized around four points—organization, design, promotion, and economic vitality to ensure that the plan is well-balanced and comprehensive.  And the ‘Magic Wall’ technique is utilized to maximize participation, build objectivity into the process, and help prioritize the proposed recommendations. 

Final deliverables for each work plan include a community economic profile, a multi-page work plan document categorized into the four points of the Main Street Approach, and a Strategy Board that will serve as an implementation matrix for the aforementioned strategies. The community stakeholders are invaluable to the project because their desire to succeed is what promotes real, lasting change in their communities.

• Best Small Area Project – The Mississippi Main Street Association is awarded the 2022 Award for Best Small Area Project for its “ITAWAMBA COUNTY DOWNTOWN ROADMAP”. 

Itawamba County is in northeast Mississippi. This strategic plan that was created by MMSA is for the downtown districts of the towns Fulton, Mantachie, and Tremont.

Community engagement was at the heart of this project and included regular feedback loops throughout the process, created to engage a diverse cross-sector of the community.   This intensive community planning process took place over five days, using methods of engagement that included a walking tour, stakeholder meetings, focus groups, a community meeting, and a final community presentation that outlined the team’s recommendations and revealed the visual imagery developed by the planning and design team. 

At the end of the process, Itawamba County Main Street Association was given a copy of the presentation and the community branding files and the three communities implemented the branding elements within a week of the planning process. Other implementation efforts are now underway. This plan, although relatively new, is already serving as a catalyst for the revitalization of the three downtown districts through its recommendations.

• Planning Advocate – The 2022 Public Advocate Award is given to Dr. Richard Conville of Hattiesburg.  Dr. Conville’s contributions to planning efforts in the City of Hattiesburg began 26 years ago when he was first appointed to the Hattiesburg Planning Commission in 1996.

To date he has attended over 300 planning commission meetings and served as the chair of the committee for many years. During that time, he contributed to all major planning documents produced for the City of Hattiesburg, including leading the Vision Advisory Team for the 2008-2028 Comprehensive Plan, being a Leadership Team Member for the Midtown Development Project (2010), and work on the adoption of the current Land Development Code for Hattiesburg (2017).  His engaging commentary and critical mind are invaluable to the community; and the institutional knowledge he brings to the commission is invaluable.

Dr. Richard Conville is also a deeply respected member of the wider Hattiesburg Community, where he was a professor of Communication Studies at the University of Southern Mississippi for 35 years until he retired in 2014. He led the university efforts to fostering student engagement and civic values for over 15 years, and active in the promotion of service learning as a discipline.  Dr. Conville was appointed as a Board Member of the Mississippi Commission for Volunteer Service by Governor Haley Barbour in 2011, and served as the Chair of the Master Campus Facility Planning Committee for the University of Southern Mississippi.

The Hattiesburg community has been fortunate to have Dr. Conville serve in his various roles as a planning advocate, where his wisdom and influence have left a positive impact on the City of Hattiesburg.  Please join us in congratulating Dr. Conville for his many years of planning advocacy and leadership in Hattiesburg. 

2022 Great Places in Mississippi winners are:

Mississippi Great Places - Street - University Drive - Starkville

University Drive in Starkville, Mississippi has been awarded the Great Street 2022 Award because of its art enhanced, safe, pedestrian friendly, inviting character that is regularly used by the public and has positively impacted the surrounding businesses, neighborhoods, and university in the community.   This one-mile central corridor links downtown Starkville with the Mississippi State Campus.  

One way this street enhances the community and university identity is extensive use of unique public art painted on the street. For this, the Carl Small Town Center at Mississippi State and the City of Starkville were recently awarded a Bloomberg Philanthropies Asphalt Art Grant. There are painted asphalt art elements along the length of the street with three large intersection murals and nine colorful crosswalks that provide traffic calming and safer pedestrian crossings.

Walking and bicycling are encouraged through a number of design features such as well maintained, shaded sidewalks, ADA compliant curb cuts, bicycle paths and street art.  Sidewalks and bike lanes stretch from campus to downtown. 

University Drive serves an important part of Starkville’s complete street network and safely serves the needs of all users. Street narrowing design elements help slow vehicular traffic to a safe speed for the three pedestrian focused districts; and several times a year, the street is closed via removable bollards for annual arts and music festivals.   

University Drive contains several green infrastructure design elements such as mature street trees that line both sides of the street, and street calming landscape bulb outs at several intersections. The pedestrian bulb outs have been planted with native plants, allowing for more absorption of stormwater runoff, and helping to reduce the amount of pavement which contributes to reducing urban heat island effects, particularly in summer. 

University Drive is a central location for community engaged activities, recreation, economic activity, unique character, and cultural distinctiveness. University Drive is truly a Great Street that provides a Great Place to live and work.  Congratulations to Starkville for its creation and support of a Great Street, University Avenue. 

Mississippi Great Places - Public Space - Pocket Museum Alley Hattiesburg

The 2022 Great Places – Public Space award is given to the “Pocket Museum Alley” in downtown Hattiesburg.   This special and unique space was born of creativity and necessity.  In 2019, Hattiesburg Mayor Toby Barker developed an idea for making a “people place” in this little alley adjoining the historic Saenger Theater. The ideas included cleaning up the alley and making it both usable and beautiful.

The Saenger Theatre had shuttered its doors during the pandemic, allowing the potential of the alley to blossom.  As the lockdown continued, the theater management wanted to create a way for people to escape the isolation of health-related restrictions and enjoy “surprise and delight”.  With a mere $800 they converted a boarded-up window in a rear storeroom of the theater into a small museum...a pocket museum.”  Later a small “Pocket Theater” opened.

The Pocket Museum, the tiniest museum in Mississippi, is now also the only “small museum” in the south on Roadtripper.com list of 8 best small museums in the U.S.  People stop and engage with the art, such as the Pocket Gallery or the Pocket Theatre.  

One element of the alley’s transformation was repaving, using a stamped faux brick pattern, a design element that encourages foot traffic and adds historic character. Later string lights were added overhead, a continuation of other string lights throughout downtown.   

Scattered tables were another key addition to the alley.  As downtown Hattiesburg is not blessed with particularly wide sidewalks and as the COVID restrictions spread, many existing restaurants were unable to add sufficient outdoor seating quickly. The city looked for innovative ways to support existing restaurants and the alley is centrally located.  The tables in the alley provided a safe environment for residents and visitors to take meals “to-go” yet stay downtown.

Around the same time as the rebirth of the alley, the mayor declared Hattiesburg would become home to 100 murals, with many of those murals in the alley. Because of these efforts, in 2022 Hattiesburg was listed in Travel + Leisure as an international leader in public art. The City has now invested over $100,000 in the alley through both infrastructure improvement and art contributions.

The Alley has become a hub for art events and has spurred many new visitors to downtown.   Many players in the community came together and turned an eye sore and a community crisis into an opportunity to make a public space more useable and attractive. It is now is a thriving, blossoming space that gives back to the community.