Jackson Jambalaya

Where is Jacksonian Plaza?

11:26 Why don't you google it? I'm sick and tired of these lazy readers wasting space when the answer is at their fingertips.

Goodwill sells groceries?

Goodwill is really not a charity. The CEO makes millions a year.
Short answer: Corporate greed.

Last year, a former Goodwill executive was sentenced to 70 months in prison for embezzling $1million from MERS/Missouri Goodwill Industries Inc., according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. In California, smaller charities, such as D.A.R.E. America, say that Goodwill has acted like a nonprofit bully and is currently using powerful lobbyists to shut down their clothing donation programs.
In 2010, Goodwill Industries International, Inc., the national parent corporation for all of the nation's secondhand clothing affiliates, paid its president and CEO James Gibbons more than half a million dollars in compensation. And dozens of state and local chapters copied the national headquarters' executive extravagance. Here's a rundown of the recent executive compensation packages for the three Florida-based Goodwill organizations that pay some employees less than minimum wage: •$440,197- CEO of Goodwill Industries-Suncoast, Inc.
•$316,685- CEO of Goodwill Industries of South Florida, Inc.
•$393,001- CEO of Goodwill Industries of Central Florida, Inc.
In California, these five Goodwill organizations exploit the special minimum wage exemption and pay executives top-dollar. A short sample of some executive compensation packages over the past few years: •$282,295- CEO of Goodwill Industries of San Diego County
•$265,388- CEO of Goodwill Industries of Orange County
•$376,317- CEO of Goodwill Industries of Sacramento Valley & Northern Nevada
•$507,898- CEO of Goodwill of Southern California
•$344,754- CEO of Goodwill Industries of Santa Clara County/ Silicon Valley
They pay their disable worker less than minimum wage by a loophole in labor laws.

@11:26 Try reading the petition

Super hero (not) Will WRONGwitz will save us all!!!!

Stokes will have a new place to shop.

Did you attend the hearing Kingfish? Really curious about the presentation and whether a resale store is the intention. What is the property owner thinking? Honestly, I don't even know why we have a zoning ordinance. The planning board and council make these decisions on an ad hoc basis based on their personal feelings instead of sound zoning principles upon which the ordinance is based.

There's two of these in Ridgeland-one near county line and one on hwy 51. What's the big deal?

"What's the big deal?"

Pore folks. They're eyesores.

It's not about underpaid workers, but the type of business the City Council is allowing into Jacksonian Plaza. Pearl has a Goodwill that is dusty and filled with beat up items. This will turn out to be the same. This store will only attract those that can't afford the items next door at Office Depot and have no interest in buying anything at Books-A-Million. It will just be a dumping ground as there will never be enough staff to keep it clean and organized. Why, in all that is holey, do these elected officials continue to encourage squaller. This plaza doesn't need to anymore crime, which unfortunately this business and it's clientel will unintentionally bring.

Look on the bright side, WholeFooders! When the riots start, it is likely that they will leave this Goodwill store unscathed. So there's that.

@1:33 - I bought 6 pair of shorts from the one in Pearl last week. All of them were either American Eagle or Holister and all still had the original tags on them. I paid about $4/pair. Also got some nice new shirts as well. I didn't get held-up, had no desire to go commit a crime after that, returned to me new home that was constructed in November and according to my pay stubs I'm still in that 25% tax bracket. I apologize for my squalor (sorry for spelling that correctly for you). I will try harder for you.

Some of you need to get a grip. Goodwill has its audited financials posted online at http://goodwillms.org/. This is a well-organized charity that has a community board of respected individuals. They provide rehab opportunities to a wide range of clients. In short, they have provided the community with a much needed service and obviously are receiving contributions and reselling them to eager buyers. And some of this merchandise is North Jackson and Madison worthy. Hell, some of you bitchers may have some Goodwill furniture in your home and your wife's new frock may not have come from Highland Village.

The big deal is that the zoning ordinance provides as follows:

No bingo parlor, pawnshop, title pledge office, or secondhand store shall be located within two hundred fifty (250) feet of any other such use, or located within five hundred (500) feet of any residentially zoned property, church, school, park, playground or public library.

These restrictions exist for a reason - because sound zoning principles find the uses incompatible with each other.

The reason this was before the Zoning Board appears to be due to the residentially-zoned property in question (i.e. within 500 feet) are apartments on Old Canton Road that back up to the LOADING DOCK area of the Jacksonian Plaza tenants (Kroger, BAM, Office Depot, etc.). The Willie Morris Branch Library is on Old Canton Road, but Google Earth measures as being farther than 500 feet from the back door of the space in question. There is no church, school, park, or playground within 500 feet.

The older Goodwill location in "downtown Pearl" that was mentioned in another comment is now closed...that store was located in an older building whose landlord was not interested in maintaining the building. Goodwill opened a new Pearl store in the Crossgates Shopping Center by Fads and Frames (vicinity of the Crossgates exit between Pearl and Brandon). That new store, as well as the Ridgeland stores, are kept clean and orderly and are closely watched by adjacent tenants and by Code Enforcement for those respective cities.

This doesen't seem to be that controversial. Is the existing tenant of the space...the "Seasons" playground store really that much better?

If anyone's been in the BAM store in recent months, they can see that a Goodwill would be an improvement. I don't know whether the whole chain is the same way, but the store is a ghost of what it once was.

People......have you forgotten? There is City Thrift 1/2 a mile up I55 S Frontage Road. Its no friggen big deal. I've been too all these stores and I have seen all walks of life in them, so CHILL OUT!!!!

Why so intense, 4:06? No one is freaking out, but I don't think the state of the shopping center where City Thrift is located is an argument that we should be pleased with this development. It certainly is not a trend in an upward direction. Our leaders, all the way up to the top of this country have adopted a policy that equality can be achieved by spreading blight to all areas equally. But to be fair to our city leaders, I think they are just dumb.

Good old Mississippi. In places that aren't insecure, Goodwill stores are great anchor stores that draw young people who spend money.

The Goodwill on Cedar and Broadway in Denver, Colorado is surrounded by more quality restaurants than exist in the Jackson metro area.

Don't look to Bill Billingsley for any consideration. He'll tell you to lump it from his multi-acre buffered mansion on the county side of the Madison city limits. But sure as hell call Bill if you see any horses abused out in the parking lot out between the quick oil change shop and the Wendy's.

How can you people talk about such trivialities? Didn't you hear that a LION in ZIMBABWE was KILLED???

The opening claim was that Goodwill will compete with Kroger. Waiting to hear an explanation for that. I don't go to Kroger to by busted furniture, short legged britches or a refrigerator with a burned out compressor.

Goodwill is exactly what is needed in that shopping center to lower the property value of Northeast Jackson. The black politicians hate whitey so much that this is a calculated move on their part to get the last 8% of whites in Jackson to moved to other counties.

8:02 pm The poor lions of Africa will be extinct in 20 years. There are only 4 white Rhinos left on Earth. They will be gone very shortly. So, your kids and their kids will never see wildlife except in a Zoo. This &/@#^ dentist needs to get a new hobby!

If you're buying American Eagle and Holister items with the price tags still intact, at these junk resale shops, they're probably stolen or shoplifted. Stealing stuff and then selling it for a nickel on the dollar has been a cottage industry since the first pawn shop opened 132 years ago.

I'm actually impressed by the opening of Poncho Wong's Sushi Bar and Bait Shop in Westland Plaza. I mean, where else can a man buy lunch and bait at one stop on his way to the fishing hole?

You're right, 10:34. Maybe I should cry like Jimmy Kimmel, or tweet out the address of the guy like Mia Farrow. Why should we concern ourselves with elections and mayors committing stat rape and budgets and local businesses when a dentist from Minnesota shot a lion in Zimbabwe that 99.99999% of the US population had never heard of before yesterday?

7:37, you REALLY need to get a life.

The address on the petition is the shopping center where Kroger and BAM are currently located, but that is not Jacksonian Plaza. JP is over by the LeFluer Station Post Office.