Jackson Jambalaya

If the city doesn’t get crime under control this will fail. If the city gets crime under control this will be a roaring success. It’s that simple. Praying for the latter.

Where will people park?

The project may come to fruition too late as more and more flee to areas where leadership actually values taxpayers' contributions by providing basic functions/services of municipalities like safety and water.

Thank goodness someone is trying to make Jackson better. Just keep the Mayor and every member of the city council away from Fondren.

RSJ restaurants are worth a ten minute drive from foreign countries like Madison.

It will come just in time. The Fondren continues to lose its staple businesses month after month. This will make it worth visiting again.

bowling-will they have league night? or is this a rip off of the hipster bowling lane in nashville? (pinewood social)

will be a huge success. way to go!

The must be a lot of bowlers in fondren

This is so exciting and great news for the whole metro area! Glad to see more progress in the Fondren neighborhood! 9:13 and 9:16 way to try and find a negative spin on this great development.

I applaud the investment in one of the last viable commercial centers of the city. And, I hope the reward is well worth the risk being taken. Will it draw the suburbanites back to the city for entertainment, or will the thugs take it over, thereby making it an undesirable destination in short order?

Fondren is about the only bright spot in Jackson these days. Everything else has died on the vine. 8:57 and 9:23 speak truth! Only a continued escalation crime will cause this to fail, but that seems to be one of the main issues about which this current city administration can't get serious! It takes a brave developer to put this much money in an area over which the likes of Baby Chok holds the cards......

No offense, but, trendy-niche jernts like this come and go. Mostly go. There will never be another Cherokee.

10:05 - Always amused by do-goody folks who see reality as negative.

Does anyone remember when there was a Be-bop Record shop right next door to the Capri in the same building? That would've been around 1979-80 I think. The Capri was still showing feature films then.

By the mid-1980s, the Be-bop was long gone and the Capri had resorted to showing porn movies before closing for good.

It's nice to see someone giving that old building new life.

The Negative Nellies show up as usual.

Geez, I guess they didn't know that CV 19 took a toll on businesses everywhere. They might should take off their blinders to wherever they call home.

I wish the Nellies could get out more so they'd see that it's not just Fondren in Jackson that is enjoying a comeback. But, perhaps their appointed guardians won't let them.

I don't live in Hinds but I am always hopeful that any new business there will succeed...Best of luck to anyone who is willing to try to improve the area.

'RSJ restaurants are worth a ten minute drive from foreign countries like Madison."
April 5, 2021 at 9:24 AM

RSJ restaurants are worth a two-HOUR drive from Madison, when those restaurants are in Hattiesburg - BECAUSE they're in Hattiesburg, away from crazy, hateful, religion-obsessed, socially-paranoid Jacksonians (who're now fleeing-to and infecting Madison with their innate meanness).

Hattiesburg IS like another country. The people there are so much nicer, ANY excuse for a daytrip mini-vacation in Hattiesburg, is a good excuse.

8:57am, you get crime under control by having vibrant, highly populated areas with many people out and about.

Did that say "Jackson's only screen"? The capital city has not one movie screen at the moment and this will be the only one? That says a lot right there.

I really hope it does well. If they would add a cold craft beer $100 men's haircut joint, it will hit the hipster trifecta.

I hope it succeeds for Jackson's sake. I wonder whose money is paying for this. Kingkish? Bueller? Anyone?

Purely going by RSJ's recent guest postings here, he could not personally afford it out-of-pocket at this point but since he doesn't show me his bank statements I can only base that on what he has written about it.

I would guess, but do not know for certain, that something like this would take a while to pay off, especially given the current "big picture" for Jackson and what seems the likely potential customer base for this kind of venue.

Everyone in Fondren and Jackson is excited about this. IF you can't see this as a good thing for the area, then that's on you.

PittPanther with the dumbest comment of the day. Wow! All it takes to get crime under control is having highly populated areas! I guess that's why there's so little crime in new york city!

Check your Hacky Sack at the front door with Security at the new
"F Bar"?

Anybody who thinks Hattiesburg is a destination-outing hasn't watched the crime numbers for the past ten years. The town is an extension of the ninth-ward a little further south.

Fondren businesses should tie into the closest hospital's water system.

4:51....huh?

The burg is booming. Old buildings coming back to life. Lots of residential units coming online inside the city limit. And as a side note, I've never seen a city pave so many roads in 3 years. Get out from under your rock and come visit.

Ditto what 4:51 says - Hattiesburg is overrun with drugs and crime. My son goes to school at USM. It's pathetic what happened to that town. Katrina washed all the New Orleans thugs straight into Hattiesburg. Then they stayed and had a bunch of thug kids. And the cops and city government sit on their hands.

The repeated stupidity that you can revive anything for the long term in Jackson is simply mind boggling. How is the King Edward doing?

Hope RSJ does well but any investment in Jackson right now is extremely high risk with limited upside.

Some folks view the theater redo with nostalgia and romanticism, but in reality its very limited seating plus the small single screen will probably only cater to the local neighborhood... until the percentages overtake it.

But I wish them well.

I wish them well! At least they're actually doing something, unlike other Jackson revitalization boondoggles that were nothing but silly talk, such as...

BB King's on Farish
Movie theaters at the District
Old Capitol Green
A domed stadium at JSU
The downtown robotic parking garage
The Metrocenter carousel/ferris wheel

and don't forget this gem:

Ben Allen, president of Downtown Jackson Partners, said at the press conference that he has seen figures showing that, with all the residential development downtown in the form of loft apartments and condos, that in 10 years there could be as many as 25,000 people living downtown, tripling traffic on Pearl Street and Pascagoula Street.

-- Mississippi Business Journal
-- March 3, 2008

2:53pm, I'm confused. You think that "crime under control" means "zero crimes?" Where does that happen?

NYC continues to be one of the most desirable cities in the world, but to hear you tell it, they can't be successful because their crime is not under control... You're insane.

This would have been a great idea twenty years ago. (when The Fondren was a thing)

I have always admired RSJ.
And still do.

But what are his backers thinking ?

The man doesn't reopen his signature restaurant "The Purple Parrot" ... bet yet is trying to open
a new venue in Jackson Mississippi ? This is the same logic of not reopening Galatoire's or such in New Orleans
but relocating to Mogadishu and constructing a new Chuck E.Cheese's.

I really do wish RSJ well with this venture, but I doubt it will be successful during the long run.

Them hipsters still trying to gentrify that area??? Haven't heard anything lately.

The bar on the Titanic was a very popular venue an hour before the vessel went down. Such is The Fondren.

Nearly all of these comments are stupid. If any of you Jackson-haters ever took a break from watching local TV news and reading this blog, you might find yourself having a great meal and night out in Fondren, Belhaven, the District/Highland Village, or (gasp) Downtown. I realize your feeble brains and low energy bodies are more comfortable typing anonymous comments into this armpit-of-the-internet, but you really should get out more.

10:18

"...I realize your feeble brains and low energy bodies are more comfortable typing anonymous comments into this armpit-of-the-internet..."

So... you... DON'T have "a feeble brain? or a low energy body?" but you're also here "typing anonymous comments into this armpit-of-the-internet"? Smart guy.

@10:18 - and yet, here you are.

talk about pouring good money after bad...When you could build this anywhere in the surrounding metro area and it would do well, you choose to build it in this sewer (pun intended), inquiring minds have to wonder.

4/5 @9:13 - A parking area is being built/redone behind the strip.
4/5 @9:54 - Yes, a hipster bowling lane similar to Pinewood Social.
4/5 @2:26 - Robert rarely puts up his own money. He has multiple investors and investor groups that finance the bulk of his restaurants.
4/6 @11:42 - Regarding "a domed stadium at JSU" being silly talk, included in the 2021 Legislative Session's appropriations bill is one million dollars to "study" building a stadium in downtown Jackson for JSU. It's not so much for JSU to have its own stadium as it is for UMMC to gain control over the current stadium's parcel of land.
- Like many in Fondren and other commenters I'm excited about this development and hope it's hugely successful. Hopefully the developers are smart enough to dig their own water well so these restaurants aren't shut down almost every other month because of Jackson water issues.
- Finally, for RSJ and the other developers (I'm looking at you David Pharr and Jason Watkins) did you really have to tear up the BRAND NEW sidewalks in Fondren by cutting holes for the fence posts? Sandbags would have sufficed. I expect you to do better than just filling up the holes. When you're finished with construction you need to rip out the now "holey" sidewalks and pour smooth new ones. Be a good boy scout and leave it better than it was, or at least return it to how it was.

Correction to my @10:34 am post - It's only $250K to study locating a stadium for JSU downtown, not $1M as I previously posted.