The land around the former Mississippi Sheriffs Boys and Girls Ranch is about to be in the hands of The Lowndes County Industrial Development Authority.
During the Lowndes County Board of Supervisors meeting Monday, the board voted to authorize county attorney Tim Hudson to draw up a quit claim deed for part of the former Mississippi Sheriffs Boys and Girls Ranch off Motley Road.
This 320-acre property is currently owned by the county, while about 60 to 65 acres of it is leased to Palmer Home, Hudson said. The industrial authority will receive all the surrounding acreage on the west side of the property and land across Motley Road for a “nominal” sum.
“(Palmer Home) will still maintain their lease on the leased property,” Hudson told The Dispatch Monday. “But what they agreed to remove from the lease, we’re going to deed to the industrial authority, which is basically the west side of the property and across the road. And they’ll start trying to market it for development.”
By putting the land around and across from the ranch in LCIDA’s hands, Board President Trip Hairston said, the property can be maintained without direct board of supervisors intervention.
“There’s been about one year that there hasn’t been a whole lot done to it, to my knowledge,” Hairston said. “We just don’t want ash trees to start growing up in it, and they can put in their regular mowing contract that they have with LCIDA.”
On Monday afternoon, LCIDA Board President Kyle McConnell told The Dispatch he didn’t know the board was going to approve the quit claim deed, but he believes the transfer fits with current Golden Triangle Development LINK and LCIDA projects in the area.
“It’s adjacent to land that we have, and it makes getting water and sewer to it a lot easier, because we already have that infrastructure in place,” McConnell said. “Expanding into that property just makes common sense.”
LINK CEO Joe Max Higgins said he has been trying to get the county to transfer the land for months now, since it would give the industrial park west of Columbus “another place to grow.”
“We’ve been land rich for over a decade,” Higgins said. “We’re not land poor, but we can see being land poor from here. So anything we’ve got that we can keep showing is going to help us.”
Higgins said he does not have a specific company in mind to take up that acreage, but any company that came into the area would most likely fit in with the pre-existing companies in the area, like Steel Dynamics.
What about the leased land?
While supervisors determined the future of the land surrounding Palmer Home’s leased section of the Mississippi Sheriffs Boys and Girls Ranch property, they did not act on “Hope’s Journey,” a potential residential rescue program for sex trafficking victims proposed by the Dream Center Golden Triangle.
Supervisors briefly discussed the issue at its April 30 meeting.
District 5 Supervisor Leroy Brooks said the conversation didn’t come up Monday because it isn’t the county’s decision how that leased portion is used.
A September 2022 chancery court order outlined that Palmer Home should use the leased property “as a residential setting for underprivileged, abused or neglected children or children in similar situations” or potentially forfeit the lease.
Palmer Home is trying to partner with Dream Center for a program that would help women up to 25 years old, which means supervisors would need to agree to change the terms of the lease since it doesn’t follow the letter of the court order.
Hudson has advised the supervisors not to amend the lease.
“The court outlined the expectations of that proposal,” Brooks said. “There is nothing for us to do regarding that.”
The new quit claim deed, Hudson said, will not directly affect acceptable usage of the leased area. But having industry growing so close to the property may change how the nonprofit uses the land.
Hairston, who is also on the Palmer Home board, said he did not believe the nonprofits were “fully aware” of the incoming industrial development when they brought their proposal to the county. He voiced concerns about housing victims of sex trafficking in the middle of a growing industrial park, though he planned to recuse himself from any decisions on the matter due to conflict of interest.
“The landscape that you see there now and the serene area is not going to be serene 30 years from now,” Hairston said. “It may not be serene two years from now.”
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