Visiting the Marion County BusinessPlex recently, I saw sports teams practicing, children getting ready for tumbling classes and adults walking around the track. And in addition to the recreational opportunities, there are more and more businesses locating at the large property along Mississippi 44.
While there still remains work to be done, most notably a falling-in gym that is an eyesore in the middle of the complex, the project has been a resounding success story for Marion County. The county took over the property five years ago from the state, which had closed the Columbia Training School in 2008 and left it sitting idle. Now many of those buildings and the land is being put to good use.
Thinking about that, I was reminded of how the school, which first opened its door 100 years ago this year, got started. It’s an interesting piece of economic development history and still gives useful insights today into how communities like Columbia can attract industry.
In 1916 Gov. Theodore Bilbo — whose sordid career isn’t relevant to this discussion but makes for another lively historical study — had pushed creating the Mississippi Industrial and Training School to provide direction to troubled youth.
“We do not want any reformatory with all the stain and stigma that attaches to such a name to discourage hope and sterilize ambition among the beneficiaries of the institution,” Bilbo said in his inaugural address on Jan. 18, 1916. “We need a school for the right direction of the native virility, enterprise and impetuosity that so frequently are responsible for the delinquency of the wayward boy; qualities, which, given right direction and development, create the useful citizens and strength of the State, but left to chance and misdirection, become a real danger and menace to society and the state.”
That was a progressive attitude for the day: A true attempt to channel the energies of youth who were getting into trouble toward a successful life.
The bill creating the school established a five-member board of trustees with responsibility for setting it up. That included picking a site, for which the state appropriated $25,000 to buy land, erect buildings and equip the institution (wouldn’t it be nice to go back to when things cost so little?). Columbia was in the mix to get it along with Hattiesburg, Laurel and Taylorsville, according to a 1995 story published in the C-P about the Training School’s history.
Each community submitted proposals to bid for the school. Smith County offered 3,000 acres near Taylorsville plus $11,000. Laurel and Jones County did $75,000 and a chance to buy sites at $15 per acre, and Hattiesburg and Forrest County proposed 3,000 acres and $25,000.
However, Columbia won the day because the Marion County Board of Trade donated 3,300 acres and $50,000 to establish it. That’s equivalent to about $900,000 in today’s money when factoring in inflation. That cash and land came from private citizens willing to put up their own funds for a project that wouldn’t benefit them directly, but which would help their community.
The state board approved locating in Marion County on May 14, 1917, and it was able to build the original administration building, the superintendent’s home and two cottages for $55,000. All but $5,000 of that came from Marion County’s contribution. The first students enrolled on Aug. 21, 1918, and the rest, as they say, is history.
What impresses me most about the project was it was not the government throwing public dollars at an economic development project, which doesn’t seem to do much more than enrich the private owners at the expense of the taxpayers. Mississippi taxpayers have been ripped off time after time with those deals. Rather it was private money, raised directly by the people affected by the school, used to attract it. It makes such a difference in the results when you’re spending your own money rather than someone else’s.
They left a great legacy for their community, one that each of us still enjoys every time we visit the BusinessPlex.
Charlie Smith is editor and publisher of The Columbian-Progress. Reach him at csmith@columbianprogress.com or (601) 736-2611.
