JACKSON, Miss.—When Dorothy Davis moved to Jackson, Mississippi, as a little girl in the 1960s, Farish Street seemed like the center of the universe. The downtown district had become a hub for Black businesses and culture during legal segregation in the state, and Davis vividly recalls shopping at the stores along its main thoroughfare and eating Frosted Flakes at the corner restaurant.
“It’s my heart,” Davis said of Farish Street, which was designated as a historic district in 1980 but fell on hard times in later decades. She’s lived in the neighborhood since she was eight years old, she explained, and she’s watched shuttered storefronts and empty sidewalks steadily replace its once-bustling crowds.
Davis is now part of an effort to revitalize Farish Street through green infrastructure. Working with the environmental nonprofit 2C Mississippi, she and other community members are creating a green space in the neighborhood that will serve as a gathering spot for residents and a natural buffer against extreme heat.
The Farish Street Commons project was among the initiatives discussed at the 2025 Parks & Trails Forum in Jackson, where local groups and public officials highlighted plans to revive or establish new green spaces around the capital city. The Oct. 30, 2025, forum was hosted by the Great City Mississippi Foundation, an organization working to boost mobility and quality of life for residents by connecting parks, museums and other public spaces.
The event attracted 10 organizations and more than 100 people, including Jackson Mayor John Horhn and other city officials, said Travis Crabtree, a landscape architect affiliated with Great City Mississippi. By giving project organizers a space to exchange ideas and collectively work through challenges, the forum sought to foster greater cohesion between the different ventures and increase collaboration moving forward.
“People being in the same room talking and communicating with each other (is) something that historically just hasn’t been happening,” Crabtree explained. “We’re just trying to make sure that there’s good connectivity amongst all these different projects.”
Greenway Will Connect Jackson State to Downtown
Key to Great City Mississippi’s connectivity goals is the planned expansion of Jackson’s Museum Trail, which will extend the existing three-mile greenway along Interstate 55 through downtown Jackson all the way to Jackson State University. The expansion will link museums and parks in northeast Jackson to other parts of the city and serve as a bridge between neighborhoods, a change that Crabtree anticipates will spur economic development and deliver public health and other lifestyle benefits.
“If you follow the Atlanta Beltline or the Lafitte Greenway in New Orleans, they’re now concentrating a lot of their residential and commercial development along those greenways,” he said. “We’re hoping that this greenway … will help to catalyze that, and provide a strong pedestrian connection between Jackson State and downtown.”
Construction on the first phase of the project—which would lengthen the museum trail behind the Old Capitol Museum and Hal & Mal’s restaurant downtown—is expected to begin in March. Subsequent phases call for eliminating some vehicular lanes downtown but will not require demolishing any structures or displacing people or businesses, Crabtree said.
The extended greenway will be anchored by Margaret Ann Crigler Park, another public green space in development next to the Museum of Mississippi History and the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum downtown.
Managed by the Mississippi Department of Archives and History, Crigler Park will complete the Two Mississippi Museums campus and connect the area to the rest of downtown, MDAH Deputy Director Tommy Goodwin told the Mississippi Free Press in November 2025. It will also serve as an event space and “outdoor classroom” for the many people and students who visit the two museums each year, he added.
“It’s going to be like almost doubling the size of the museums,” Goodwin explained, noting that the park will have a 2,000-person capacity and a designated play area for children. “We’re going to suddenly have this huge green space that we’ll be able to use for all kinds of things, whether it’s educational programming or concerts.”
MDAH is still raising funds for the park’s initial construction phase, which the agency expects to be completed by spring of 2027. The Mississippi Legislature has allocated $3 million toward the project, and MDAH announced a separate $1.4 million investment from multiple foundations and anonymous donors. The agency plans to request an additional $2 million from lawmakers during the current legislative session, Goodwin said.
Restoring the Mississippi River Basin Model
Last year’s Parks & Trails Forum also touched on efforts to restore portions of the Mississippi River Basin Model, a historic structure and government engineering tool that once covered 200 acres of what is now Buddy Butts Park in West Jackson. Though much of the model has been converted to forest, bike trails and soccer fields over the years, local volunteers have spent the last decade trying to preserve its remaining sections and create educational opportunities around them.
So far, volunteers have managed to clear vegetation from around seven acres of the original model and installed walkways to increase public access, said Aaron Morris, president of Friends of the Mississippi River Basin Model, the nonprofit leading the restoration effort. The group eventually hopes to make parts of the model usable for hydraulic engineering demonstrations and build an adjoining facility offering science and engineering training.
“Our ultimate goal is to develop and build a STEM center—science, technology, engineering and math—and utilize the river model as the backdrop for that,” Morris said in an interview. “That way, we can be the catalyst for the next stewards of the city of Jackson, so the youth today can understand that they have opportunities in the sciences.”
Morris said he hopes to see the STEM center open at Buddy Butts Park in the next five to eight years, but funding remains a challenge. His organization is eyeing various options to pay for the facility, from public grants available to the city of Jackson to a federal landmark designation from the National Park Service.
“Money is going to be the catalyst to how quickly this moves,” Morris explained, adding that Jackson’s new mayoral administration and Parks and Recreation Department will play an important role in fundraising efforts moving forward.
On Farish Street, 2C Mississippi and its partners have started planting the vegetation that will form the district’s new green commons. The area will eventually include roughly 100 native trees and other plants that are drought and heat-resilient, said Dominika Parry, president and CEO of 2C Mississippi. The foliage will provide shade and natural cooling for the neighborhood, where soaring temperatures have kept residents from gathering outdoors and holding community events and festivals.
“The idea is to cool (Farish Street) off with very cost-effective solutions, which is simply growing vegetation,” Parry said, noting that a shortage of trees has allowed heat to linger in the neighborhood and kept it from dissipating overnight. “Hopefully … after we put the trees in, and as they grow, the temperatures are going to go down and people are going to be feeling more comfortable.”
Parry expects initial construction of the green commons to be completed this spring, providing residents with a place to congregate ahead of the district’s historic Juneteenth celebrations. Her organization also plans to install an event stage in the space and work with residents like Dorothy Davis to track temperature changes in the neighborhood.
Davis hopes the green commons will breathe new life into the place she’s called home for six decades. She’s betting that the project will spark additional development around Farish Street, giving people and businesses a reason to return to the district once hailed as the “Black Mecca” of Mississippi.
“A lot of people can’t believe until they see something,” she said. “People are actually seeing something (now), so they’re believing once again.”