Board gets Rising Spring update; Baptist Clinic move confirmed

By Randy Bell

     The first phase of the mixed-use development across the street from Mississippi College is wrapping up.  And at the Board of Aldermen’s March 3 work session, engineers involved in the project explained how they’re preparing to roll into the next phase of the much-anticipated Rising Spring project, with plenty of work to be done later this year and early next year.

     “In April of ’26, we will be complete with the entire project, through Phase 2,” says Ron Emery, vice president of general construction for Century Construction Group, which is overseeing the development.

     Much of what’s been happening at the site in recent weeks involves preparing the roadways for paving.

     “They’re lime-treating the roads, which just makes the soil more stable,” Emery says.  But the work is weather-sensitive.

     “We can’t lime when it rains,” Project Engineer Andrews McIntyre points out.

     According to McIntyre, the biggest challenge during Phase 1 has been the work to preserve Robinson Spring, the historic natural feature which gives the development its name.

     “There’s water in the spring right now,” he says.  “I checked it myself.”

     Mississippi College Chief Operating Officer and Chief Financial Officer Laura Jackson is pleased with the progress that’s been made toward making Rising Spring a reality.

     “It’s been very rewarding to get to this point and actually see a [completion] date on the calendar and on the schedule that is a little over a year away,” she says.

     MC owns much of the land on which the development is being built.

     Jackson is hoping there won’t be any downtime between the two phases of work.

     “They are a little bit delayed because of the weather and the spring on Phase 1, and they’ve already started the process with the City to do the bidding for Phase 2; so, hopefully, it’s going to be relatively seamless.”

     Until now, the focus has been on preparing the site for the construction to follow.  But Jackson says, as Phase 2 gets underway, the development will really begin to take shape, including official word on some of the businesses who’ll be locating at Rising Spring.

     “We’re in conversations with a couple of people that you will recognize, restaurant names,” she says.  “You will begin to see some announcements probably coming out in the next few months.”

     And even before Phase 2 is finished, Jackson says the first buildings could be going up.

     “I think it’s a pretty well-known fact Baptist Clinic is going to build over there.  That’s been stated before.  I think you may actually see that coming out of the ground before April of ’26, because they know where it’s going to go [and] they can go ahead and finish working on the pad and start working on the vertical construction.”