Greenville’s economic future will be won or lost not in a single big project, but in a long, steady fight against apathy and neglect, Washington County Economic Alliance CEO Justin Burch told a luncheon crowd at First Baptist Church this week.
‘We fail the eye test 100%’
Burch, who also heads the nonprofit Delta Compass, said Greenville has the assets to compete for industry — a commercial airport, a top inland river port, land, water and power — but too often loses prospects within minutes of their arrival.
“We’ve gotten people out at the airport, we’ve gone a quarter mile down the road and they said, ‘I’ve seen all I need to see, I’m done,’” Burch said, citing junk car lots, boarded buildings and overgrown streets as deal-breakers for site selectors.
He said companies read those conditions as clear signs that “y’all don’t enforce your regulations here,” regardless of what’s on the books.
Apathy, false starts and accountability
Burch repeatedly returned to what he called Greenville’s core problem: apathy.
“How many of you know what the word apathy means?” he asked. “Don’t care.”
Residents at the luncheon recounted decades of big promises — casinos, convention centers, hospital expansions, airport projects — that never materialized or fell short, feeding skepticism toward any new plans. Burch acknowledged what he called “a graveyard of pilot programs” and “false starts” over 30 to 40 years, with money poured into plans and studies that were never implemented.
But he said citizens share responsibility for the lack of follow-through.
“You do not work for them, they work for you,” Burch said of elected officials. “Who holds them accountable? You do.”
He pointed to a recent debate over a proposed city curfew. Many residents later said they supported it, Burch noted, but “how many do you think showed up to city council in favor of the curfew when they voted? … Zero.”
“If we could redo the entire city of Greenville in witty and nasty Facebook posts, we’d have the best community in the country,” he added, calling social media complaints “the lowest form of civility” compared to showing up at meetings and demanding votes.
Downtown stigma and policy fixes
Burch said downtown Greenville is “very, very stigmatized” as dangerous, even though crime data show it is one of the safer parts of the city. He argued that perception is fueled less by actual crime and more by boarded windows, vacant buildings and poor lighting.
He plans to ask the City Council to ban long-term plywood on downtown structures, saying boards are supposed to be temporary and quickly become safety and code problems. They also block visibility for police and firefighters, he said.
Invoking the “broken window” concept, Burch warned that one unrepaired window leads to another, then to vagrancy and widespread disinvestment. Bars on doors and windows, he added, are among the “worst things you can do” for safety, arguing that lighting is far more effective at deterring crime.
Vacant properties also drain public finances, Burch said, pushing cities to lean on water bills instead of ad valorem and sales taxes when buildings sit empty and code enforcement has no business to shut down. Decades of underinvestment in the water system, combined with a federal environmental decree, have left Greenville residents with high utility costs that now serve as the city’s “number one revenue stream,” he said.
Redevelopment projects residents can see
While he criticized past planning-heavy efforts, Burch highlighted several tangible projects aimed at changing both the reality and perception of downtown.
Among them:
-
Wayfinding and block-number signs throughout downtown to help visitors and emergency responders orient themselves on streets that often lack business names or posted addresses.
-
A “Welcome to Greenville” mural on the side of Hooker Engineering near the railroad tracks, meant to signal that visitors have arrived at a destination and encourage photo-taking in a cleaned-up area.
-
New gateway and wayfinding signs in the historic district and a planned $25,000 upgrade to the median near St. James, designed to create a stronger entry point into the city.
-
A $150,000 renovation of the Boys and Girls Club facility to remove black mold, install new ceilings and walls, update bathrooms to ADA standards and give families a place they can be proud to use.
-
A new statue honoring Greenville native Mary Wilson of The Supremes near the Quality Inn redevelopment downtown, where about $3 million in reinvestment is planned with an opening targeted for this summer.
Burch also described the cleanup of the 800 block brownfield site downtown — once “the ugliest brownfield y’all had in y’all city,” he said — where crews have removed about 20 tons of debris and remediated asbestos. The site is slated to become the Great River Road Market, the Delta Menagerie sculpture park featuring bronze animals representing protected refuge species, and new offices for Delta Compass.
He said his office is helping private investors reduce redevelopment risk by layering new markets, low-income housing and historic tax credits to nearly cut project costs in half.
“We have a very cool… Queen City,” Burch said, noting Greenville’s “some of the coolest architecture I’ve ever seen in my life” despite years of neglect. “Invest in your downtown… even if you can’t afford to get a building or remediate it, support the ones who are doing it.”
Nelson Street, Doe’s and a Smithsonian-backed park
On Nelson Street, Burch said the alliance has acquired nine lots around Doe’s Eat Place, a world-famous Greenville steakhouse often requested by visiting site selectors.
“The one thing they know about Greenville, Mississippi is Doe’s,” Burch said.
But he said their impression has been shaped by disinvestment around the restaurant. To change that, the organization is developing a bottle tree park and related exhibits on the street.
Burch announced that the bottle tree park project has been awarded an America 250 grant and will be one of only five Smithsonian-designated America 250 sites in Mississippi — and the only one in the Delta — as part of the nation’s 250th anniversary observance. Plans on Nelson Street also include the restored “Shogun” house, a single-barrel example of Greenville’s historic housing stock purchased for $250 and rehabilitated for about $250,000 to serve as offices for the city’s Historic Commission and a private dining space tied to Doe’s.
Burch said his office is also working on exhibits recognizing the region’s rural Black population and Delta Chinese heritage.
Homelessness and regional pressures
Responding to questions about homelessness downtown, Burch said his agency does not lead that work but supports others, praising Sacred Space and its director, Chris Vowell, who recently received an $850,000 grant.
He said many homeless individuals in Greenville struggle with mental health issues and fall through gaps after leaving the justice or mental health systems, losing access to medication and support.
Learning from Tupelo, avoiding the Clarksdale trap
Burch contrasted Greenville’s approach with that of two other Mississippi cities.
He criticized Clarksdale as “hyper-focused” on blues tourism, saying tourism can be a good sector but cannot carry a local economy on its own because hotel, retail and restaurant jobs rarely pay enough to support a family.
By contrast, he cited Tupelo as a model of long-term community development. Decades ago, Greenville was about twice Tupelo’s size and still growing, while Tupelo struggled to land industry, he said.
“Tupelo actually started on a community development level, and that’s essentially what we’re trying to do back here in Greenville,” Burch said. After more than 20 years of work on quality of life and the built environment, he noted, Tupelo now boasts major employers such as Toyota’s Blue Springs plant and can invest about $8 million a year in its local economic development organization from municipal sources alone.
“All of these towns that are an overnight success, what most people don’t realize is it was 20, 25 years of work,” Burch said.
Events to rebuild pride — and a new ‘hub city’
Burch said part of reversing apathy is simply getting people back downtown, having fun and imagining what old buildings could become. He cited the return of the Dragon Boat Regatta on Lake Ferguson, with more than 60 people already signed up, and a growing slate of downtown events such as kickball, dodgeball, bubble games, a levee “pumpkin roll” and leadership programs for both adults and high school juniors.
The goal, he said, is to “put down the woe is us, the sadness, and just go out and have a little fun,” while exposing young people to local civic processes and career paths so they will consider coming back after college.
Looking ahead, Burch said Greenville is emerging as the “hub city” of the Delta as nearby communities continue to lose population, citing recent drops in Clarksdale and Greenwood. As national retailers and restaurants look for a single location with enough scale to serve the wider region, he said, Greenville is increasingly the logical choice.
Lowe’s, he said, chose Greenville as its Delta market because it was the only community large enough to support surrounding towns, a “hub and spoke” pattern Burch expects other companies to follow, particularly along Highway 1 and near the bypass and Harlow’s Casino.
‘People need to be proud to be from Greenville again’
Burch closed with a call for residents to reclaim pride in a city once known as the Queen City of the Delta, and to shift their gaze from nostalgia to long-term rebuilding.
“People need to be proud to be from Greenville again,” he said. “We need to quit thinking about 1950s Greenville and start thinking about 2050 Greenville.”
He urged citizens to demand enforcement of existing laws, support local businesses, pick up litter instead of just posting about it, and push back when outsiders disparage the city.
“You’re either going to let the good snowball or you’re going to let the bad,” he told the luncheon. “But you have to be the decider on that.”
