Jackson Jambalaya

During a standing-room-only meeting in downtown Jackson, Latrice Rogers — the entrepreneur known for her role on the Oprah Winfrey Network reality TV show the “Belle Collective” — read aloud the email addresses of residents who have complained about her one-year-old restaurant, Fondren Taste Bar and Grill.

In an attempt to clear the air, Rogers said she’d reached out to each one of them. 

Upon hearing her email, Jennifer Baughn, an architecture historian who lives down the street from Taste, in the otherwise sleepy north Fondren neighborhood off Meadowbrook Road, spoke up.

“That’s me,” she said so members of the Jackson Planning Board could hear her. “I’ve never received an email.” 

“But I have it here,” Rogers insisted as other residents began to say that they, too, had not heard from her. “I literally have it here.”

Residents in close proximity to Taste have complained for months that the establishment, which many of them refer to as a nightclub despite Rogers’ insistence it is a bar and restaurant, has disturbed their quality of life with loud music and traffic.

At issue Wednesday was Taste’s proposal to build nine residential units — which it hoped to use as Airbnbs — on top of its existing restaurant in a section of Fondren historically home to offices, convenience stores and fast-food chains. The units are part of Rogers’ plan to invest in north Jackson that began when she opened a beauty supply store in 2022 after owning a beauty business in the area for more than a decade. 

“We’re not going to invest in the neighborhood just to destroy it,” she told Mississippi Today. 

To open Airbnbs, the city’s zoning administrator, Ester Ainsworth, had recommended Taste pursue rezoning its white brick restaurant, one of the few newly redone commercial buildings in this part of Fondren, from commercial to mixed-use development. 

The proposal rankled residents of the otherwise low-key neighborhood. Six people, including Baughn, spoke in opposition to what she called a “de facto entertainment district” with music that is too loud and patrons who park illegally and drive recklessly. 

“This has been the most stressful year of my life as every weekend has been taken away from us,” she said. “We cannot enjoy the peace of our household and that has happened without any due process from our neighbors.” 

After about an hour of discussion, the planning board overwhelmingly voted to recommend denying the rezoning. The issue will eventually go before the city council, which has the final say on whether or not to grant Taste’s request. 

“Thank you for your investment in the city,” said Michael Booker, the planning chairman who represents Ward 2 and voted against the measure, as Rogers and her attorneys walked out of the room. 

As they exited, they vowed aloud to build hotel rooms instead.

Terris Harris, an attorney who spoke on behalf of Rogers, told the planning board that he thought an above hotel would be permitted under the restaurant’s existing zoning classification, so Taste could pursue its goal of building the units even if the board nixed its Airbnb-apartment idea. 

“That would be well within the requirements of their zoning, so it's tomato, tomato, chocolate, chocolate, however you want to say this, it's the exact same thing,” he said.  

Harris added that he believed residents’ opposition to Taste’s proposal had “absolutely nothing” to do with a second floor of residential units but rather a mistaken belief that Taste operates as a nightclub when it is in fact a bar and restaurant. 

“These aren't fly-by-night business folks,” he said. “These are business folks with multimillion dollar enterprises who have spent over a million in that place. … This is not a nightclub. That's not what this is. This is a fine dining restaurant, and the cigar lounge they have in there is super small, so it's not a lot of people in there.” 

Rogers insisted she had done everything she could to ameliorate the concerns, such as buying parcels of land around the restaurant to create additional parking and even tuning over security footage that police wanted when they investigated a shooting near a nightclub across the street from Taste called Parlour Room (KF: She wants a cookie for doing what she is supposed to do?). The bullets injured eight people and police reportedly found at least 30 casings outside. 

“We have hired extra security guards. We have got a noise ordinance reader. We got with the police to make sure we have the exact same ordinance reader as they do,” Rogers said. “We started closing earlier. We don't even have a DJ where we started off having a DJ.” 

Baughn and others conceded Taste is not the only bar on the street causing problems for residents. 

“It’s a different crowd,” she said of the Parlour Room. “It’s a little more criminal of a crowd than Taste, but it's not as popular as Taste, and it has adequate parking, which Taste does not.” 

Liz Brister, the president of Downtown Jackson Partners who lives in the neighborhood and has renovated homes there, said a nonprofit organization working on Fondren’s economic development plan is looking at the need to rezone the area to encourage residential density. 

Doug Boone, the executive director of the Fondren Renaissance Foundation, claimed Taste has made no attempt to hear from residents and had, in fact, misled them about the nature of its business from the start. 

Brenda Davis, a resident who moved to North Fondren in 1989 and decided to stay there after she retired in the late 2000s, said she hears “booming bass” and “cars screeching” every weekend. 

“‘No communication’ might not be the word,” she said of the relations between the bar and residents, “but no communication between the two that would cause a compromise.” 

Ainsworth, the zoning administrator, said she had witnessed the bar’s patrons parking up and down the street, flouting No Parking signs. Emily Pote, a planning board member representing Ward 7, asked who is supposed to hold the bar responsible for that, to which Ainsworth replied, “the city.” 

“But sometimes people pay us no attention, and they do whatever they feel is necessary for their survival,” Ainsworth said. 

After the meeting, Baughn said that her street has had problems over the years with loud establishments, including a spate of rave clubs about 20 years ago that were shut down after residents got the city council and the fire marshal involved. 

Compared to the raves, Taste has the potential to be an improvement, Baughn said. 

“I love that building, and actually, what they’ve done with it isn’t bad,” she said of Rogers’ redesign. 

Baughn said she doesn’t know why bars or nightclubs have flocked to this area of town over the years, except for its excess vacant rental space. She believes the solution now is to sever the commercial and residential sides of North Fondren by closing off the street. 

“I do think there could be a compromise, she has just not been interested in it,” Baughn said of Rogers. “She could’ve talked to us today, but she didn’t.”

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.