A unique urban park in Jackson seeks to become of one of the state’s premier cultural destinations. Encompassing four distinct museums and featuring playgrounds, sports venues, walking and biking trails, family-friendly gathering spaces, and improved access to the Pearl River, the Lefleur Museum District is the mission of the Lefleur’s Bluff Conservancy chaired by Mississippi Children’s Museum founder and Jackson visionary Susan Garrard.
“This master plan really was born of the desire from the Children's Museum to replace the Lefleur’s Bluff playground,” Garrard modestly told the Rotary Club of North Jackson. Already having created one of the nation’s top children’s museums, she had a much bigger dream.
In 2021, the Children’s Museum was one of six recipients awarded the National Medal for Museum and Library Service, the nation’s highest honor for museums and libraries that make significant and exceptional contributions to their communities. “We were the youngest museum in the nation,” Garrard said.
“We were really excited about our medal,” she continued. “And we decided that we really, really, really wanted our surroundings here in Jackson to reflect kind of our award-winning ways.”
“How do other cities do that?” she remembered asking. “Other cities do that through conservancies,” she found out. So, she led the formation of the first conservancy in Mississippi, the LeFleur’s Bluff Conservancy, leased 104 acres from the Mississippi Department of Wildlife, Fisheries and Parks, and got $13 million from the state legislature to, uh, enhance the “surroundings” of the Children’s Museum.
The enhancements include: $1.8 million from the Capitol Complex Improvement District to revamp Museum Boulevard which runs beside I-55; a 30,000‑square‑foot state‑of‑the‑art playground funded by a $3.86 million grant from the Blue Cross & Blue Shield Mississippi Foundation; new entrances to the Mississippi Museum of Natural Science, the Children’s Museum, and the new playground complex; and extension of the Museum Trail along and through LeFleur’s Bluff.
Still to come are a tournament level disc golf course designed by world champion disc golfer Avery Jenkins; a 10-hole youth walking golf course designed by Robert Trent Jones that will be home to First Tee of Mississippi; lighting for nighttime play; botanical gardens; a fitness park; ball field enhancements; pickle ball courts; and future expansions of the Children’s Museum and the Natural Science Museum.
On August 19th, ground breaking occurred for a pedestrian and biking bridge over Lakeland Drive to connect the park to Mississippi Agriculture and Forestry Museum and the Mississippi Sports Hall of Fame and Museum. Sen. Cindy-Hyde Smith obtained $7 million in federal funding for this project.
Oh, Garrard also founded the Great City Mississippi Foundation to improve the rest of Jackson around the Children’s Museum.
“Let us not become weary in doing good” – Galatians 6:9.
Crawford is an author and syndicated columnist from Jackson.
18 comments:
That pedestrian bridge skin is a horror in three acts:
1. Imagine something of such immense ugliness being the first thing and the last thing a visitor to Jackson drives under coming from and returning to the airport.
2. Imagine the reverberating massive wind loads on such a skinned structure spanning 150 ft +/-.
The skinned structure appears to be made up of a jaggedly pointed sheet metal design that under sufficient wind loading could release and fly through 8 or more lanes of traffic, below.
3. Maintenance, security and lighting for the design will be an enormously expensive recurring cost not just at the outset, but going forward.
I resent the threatening design and woke colors of this aberration in pedestrian bridge design.
To reduce cost and eliminate massive wind loads, use an open truss design that is simple, strong and unwoke.
Krusatyr—it’s a bridge, not a “woke” politician, doctrine, or law. Not everything is politics. Get a life.
1:15pm
Culture and multi-millions in a highly visible bridge that will be there 50 years matter, you do not.
Ridgeland and Madison have borne out their quality through attractive, undatable, classical design. It's paying dividends in continuing growth. This ugly freak of a bridge needs an abortion in favor of common sense.
Krusy -- Are you a structural engineer or do you just play one on Jackson Jambalaya?
Good luck!
Speaking of things that do not “matter,” literally zero people care about whether you think that light green is a liberal color that somehow triggers you, Krusatyr.
Your comment is dumb as shit, even for the Internet, and even for the comments section of this site (which says a ton).
Dear gosh, “Krusatyr” you are making us conservatives look awful. Absolutely nothing “woke” about the bridge. Please shut the hell up. It will look great and function very well. I’m certain that the architects/engineers that came up with the plan know more than you. Just go be miserable somewhere else.
Krusatyr, on what planet is the bridge design ugly? It will match the rest of the LeFleur’s Bluff design. It looks good. It isn’t pink or neon. It’s a gentle blue and green.
12:06 for braindead comment of the year. Something great comes to Jackson and instantly there is bitching and complaining. You need to lay off the Sean Hannity and Jesse Waters, my friend. Not everything is “WOKE” or “SOCIALIST” or “MAMDANI”. I say this as a very hard right conservative. Don’t be so “Republican” that you live life in misery.
3:17pm et al:
Not an engineer but have relative interest and experience. Though I appreciate all the attending remarks from such a cultured set of inbreds, I am looking to the future where significant private investors can be romantically and financially motivated to build quality in Jackson, as they consistently are in Ridgeland and Madison. The cultural and public bones of a City count in getting that done over time. Then quality can eventually build on itself. This design will be either funky Seattle-Stupid or simple, handsome and enduring. Beauty is rare. Ugly is forever.
Beauty is everywhere; ugly is misperception
4:26pm, thanks for polite question:
The bridge is ugly and
unnecessarily dangerous in the fact and form of its skin, regardless of my animus to its color, and needlessly expensive. I want a bridge there. The modified Pratt type truss, as currently designed, under the jaggedy ass sheathing, is classic handsome beauty. Simply removing the skin makes the bridge stronger, cheaper, safer, longer lasting, better lit, easier to maintain and better looking over time. Heavy gage Black hurricane fencing can enclose the interior of sides and top at the inside, leaving the structural trusses entirely exposed from outside, to prevent brick/rock throwing by thugs, suicides and yet be as wind tolerant as the naked trusses.
In March of 2020, 75mph straight line West to East winds blew through central MS spiking at 90mph for just under an hour. Lakeland Dr in the area of the proposed bridge will be an unobstructed wind tunnel forever. De-skinning the bridge removes the sail effect it has as currently designed.
Update us on skyhook, he blocks any white person that follows his page
Someone said Skyhook facebook page
has been silent the past few days.
3:17pm
I am not an engineer but have enough understanding to feed assumptions into AI for a back of napkin estimate of resulting wind loads
Assumptions: Span = 180 L', exterior sheathing height 16', structural width 16', design wind load 100mph, deck is 16' clear above pavement, below, though structural beams hang 2' lower providing 14' truck clearance.
Results: ~25 psf wind load on windward sheathing, 384 plf, 61.44 Kips total sideways force, and 20 psf uplift.
* Note uplift will remain even if sheathing deleted. I wouldn't want to see the carnage if sharply angled sheet metal were flying debris in the 10 lanes below. I have not seen specs for the peculiar lime green, angled pieces attached to the bridge trusses but they look threatening.
Is it wrong to know the identities of the Engineers, Architects and Skin Consultants involved with the design of this bridge thing? Plus: how does one climb up and onto the surface?
Krusaytr is a hipster with a AI subscription. "I want a rustic bridge that every small town in america has!!!" "Retvrn to tradition we are the new rome!!!"
Please explain the post(s) about Skyhook. Never heard of him/her/it.
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