The Depot building on the corner of Main Street and 13th Street South was once a bustling location, with tens of thousands of travelers arriving and departing at the train station.
Its status today is better described in an aviation term, however.
“You could say we’re in a holding pattern,” said the 130-year-old building’s owner, Gayle Guynup.
Guynup, a judge from Santa Rosa, California, bought the old train station in August 2014. It is one of several properties in Mississippi she has purchased over the past 15 years when she became manager of her father’s trust. Her father had purchased the Gateway Shopping Center in the 1980s, but Guynup’s purchases in Clarksdale and Columbus since then have been motivated more by preserving historic business than investments.
Before purchasing the Depot, she had also bought the Oddfellows Building on Main Street and the Parker Furniture Complex and the Alford Drugs building near the intersection of Main and Fifth streets.
Wednesday, Guynup sat on an old bench on the south side veranda of the Depot to talk about the progress of her latest project.
“The four apartments upstairs are finished,” she said. “Three of them have been leased and we’re close to an agreement on the fourth one.”
Work on the downstairs portion of the building, she said, will wait until a commercial tenant or tenants can be found. The L-shaped building has a total downstairs square footage of 6,144 — 2,874 square feet on the Main Street wing and 3,360 on the 13th Street wing.
Originally, Guynup envisioned a micro-brewery that would use the entire property, but that idea was permanently shelved when a state legislative bill that would have allowed micro-breweries to sell their product onsite was killed by Rep. Jeff Smith (R-Columbus), chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee. By the time the bill was reintroduced a year later, Guynup’s group had already committed to building upstairs apartments on the property.
Guynup said Wednesday she still hopes to add a tenant that would appeal to both Mississippi University for Women, located just a block south, and residents who live in the city’s downtown apartments.
“I think it would be great to have a deli and grocery market at this location,” Guynup said. “That would be something that would appeal to (Mississippi University for Women) and the people who live near downtown. I could see that working.”
Guynup said she doubts there will eventually be a single tenant, but she is open to all possibilities.
Until that comes into better focus, most of the building’s renovation will be delayed.
“We decided to go ahead and do the work that would have to be done regardless of the tenants,” she said. “We’re going to pull out the original plank (floors), put in a new subfloor and re-planing the original floor.
“We’re trying not to make any structural changes,” she added. “It’s the age-old problem: Some people can’t visualize what you can do with a space and other people can. Some people walk in and love it and other people aren’t going to have any interest until they see in its final form. But with this much space, you don’t want to start putting in things that would limit its use.”
Guynup said there are no negotiations in progress, although her real estate agent, Royce Hudspeth of Rhett Reality, continues to show the property.
“It’s a property that is still attracting interest,” said Hudspeth, who said he shows the property “often.”
In the meantime, Guynup said she is going over ideas for murals on the east side of the building and a mural at the Parker Furniture building with West Point muralist Deborah Mansfield.
“She’s shown me several ideas,” Guynup said, “but we’re still working on what we want to do.”
Slim Smith is a columnist and feature writer for The Dispatch. His email address is [email protected].
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