Mayor wants Landmark Center considered for city offices

Jackson Mayor Tony Yarber says he wants city officials to consider whether some city offices should move to the Landmark Center downtown.

Last year, Israeli attorney and developer Zeev Yochelman and his partnership purchased the vacant Landmark Center, with plans to turn it into a mixed-use building, with residential, retail and office space.

The roughly 345,000-square-foot building on Capitol Street sold for $2.025 million in an auction to Yochelman's group.

After the building initially last year, Yarber said the new owners approached the city about some city services relocating there. However, an artist's drawing showing City Council members' offices in the Landmark Center touched off controversy, with council members saying there had been no discussion with them about it. Ward 7 Councilwoman Margaret Barrett-Simon questioned whether the mayor was trying to move council members out of City Hall.

A spokesman for the mayor said at the time that the city received renderings from the new owners of potential plans for city council offices in the building, but the city wasn't considering it because there was no money in the budget for such a move.

Now, Yarber said he has been approached again about possibly locating some offices in the Landmark Center. He said he wants to present information to council members, including cost analysis about potentially moving some city services into the Landmark Center.

"I want to see if there is any appetite for it," Yarber said.

Council members still seem opposed to their offices being moved to the Landmark Center.

"I don't think we need to go anywhere," council President De'Keither Stamps said. "The administration can go."

Yarber said council members will have the opportunity to decide a proposal to relocate some city services to the Landmark Center.

Discussion of moving some city services to the Landmark Center was placed in the council's economic development committee. No timetable has been set for when the mayor will give his presentation or when the committee will meet on it.

The Landmark building had been vacant since AT&T left in 2012. The University of Mississippi Medical Center had reached a deal to buy the property, but the deal fell through when the medical center redirected money allocated for the purchase to the possible removal of century-old graves found on the school's campus.

Before the UMMC deal collapsed, the Landmark Center was the recommended site for the Department of Revenue, according to a study done by the Mississippi Department of Finance and Administration in conjunction with Millsaps College's Else School of Management.

However, a site in Clinton was chosen to house the Department of Revenue.

Contact Jimmie E. Gates at (601) 961-7212 or jgates@jackson.gannett.com. Follow @jgatesnews on Twitter.