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WE DN E SDAY, April 14, 2010 • 50¢
Downtown Partners strikes up work on details By Steve Sanoski ssanoski@vicksburgpost.com
month by Mayor Paul Winfield, who is charging the appointed members with exploring ways to balance residential, retail and entertainment redevelopment along Washington Street and the greater downtown area. The group’s 15 members are a mix of shop owners, residents and restaurateurs, among others. Blake Teller, an attorney, was selected as chairman. Larry Gawronski, director of VenuWorks, was elected vicechairman; Karen Davis, the owner of a downtown beauty salon, secretary; and David Day, restaurant owner and radio host, spokesman. The group is meeting
Downtown Partners began to add some structure Tuesday evening, as members elected officers and began to discuss their short-term ideas during the group’s second meeting. “Y’all are in a much better place than you think you are,” said moderator Ben Allen, a Vicksburg native and president of Downtown Jackson Partners. “You’ve got the hard part done already — you have people who care here.” The organization was formed last
monthly, and their 90-minute meeting Tuesday advanced preliminary discussions that emerged during a four-hour meeting in March. Winfield told the members he assembled them to “put the future of downtown in the hands of the citizens there.” “We have a comfortable situation, but if we don’t start looking at what’s ahead of us, I think we’ll be selling ourselves short,” the mayor said. The members on Tuesday learned more from Allen, former member of See Downtown, Page A7.
merediTh spencer•The Vicksburg PosT
Moderator Ben Allen addresses members of Downtown Partners.
Davenport headed back to courtroom
DANCING A JIG
By Pamela Hitchins phitchins@vicksburgpost.com
KATie cArTer•The Vicksburg PosT
Four-year-old Drake McClure plays in the fountains at Splash Park at Catfish Row Tuesday afternoon, one of the first days the City Front play area has been open since the
fall when a rubber surface was installed and a few trees were removed from the surrounding areas. Drake is the son of Dustin and Melissa McClure.
A third criminal trial in Warren County will be scheduled, probably in 2011, for Dane Davenport, Attorney General Jim Hood has decided. The 47-year-old state trooper will face four counts of fondling a child younger than 14 on which jurors here could not agree when his second trial ended March 5. The same jury acquitted him of five counts of child sexual battery and molestation in the same indictment. Davenport’s first Warren County trial, in September 2008, resulted in a “hopelessly deadlocked” jury. Davenport also was tried on a related molestation charge in Oktibbeha County. He was acquitted there in a five-day trial in February 2009 after an initial mistrial in October 2009.
“I am very surprised,” said Nancy Whitten, a juror for Davenport’s most recent trial, when contacted Dane about Hood’s Davenport decision. “No. 1, I wouldn’t put the boys through it again, and No. 2, if this has gone before two juries and come back hung juries both times — I just felt like the state did not do a sufficient job.” Whitten said last month’s panel was split on the four counts, five jurors voting guilty and seven not guilty. “I never voted him innocent,” she said. “I voted not guilty for lack of evidence to show him guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.” A spokesman in Hood’s See Davenport, Page A7.
Local river-turbine firm seeks part of N.O. deal
County subdivision rules might be strengthened
By Danny Barrett Jr. dbarrett@vicksburgpost.com
By Danny Barrett Jr. dbarrett@vicksburgpost.com
A company seeking to place power-generating turbines near Vicksburg and several other sites in the Mississippi River is among five interested in testing at a planned facility in New Orleans. Free Flow Power Corp. wants to use a 22,000-squarefoot plant funded by a $3
million federal stimulus to develop some of the turbines it wants to place in the river between St. Louis and Plaquemines Parish in south Louisiana. The River Sphere facility would be developed in an existing building at the Port of New Orleans and would include laboratories, a barge where turbines can be river-
The associaTed Press
A Free Flow Power worker is dwarfed by the company’s proprietary SmarTurbine Generator.
See Turbines, Page A7.
Warren County might beef up its subdivision development ordinance to ban lot sales until the first phase of road and drainage planning and construction is complete. A hearing would be required before any change in the ordinance, which supervisors have tried to enforce with varying degrees
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1828: The first edition of Noah Webster’s “American Dictionary of the English Language” is published. 1865: President Abraham Lincoln is assassinated by John Wilkes Booth during a performance of “Our American Cousin” at Ford’s Theater in Washington. 1912: The British liner RMS Titanic collides with an iceberg in the North Atlantic and sinks.
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of success since 2004. The goal is to protect homebuyers from washouts and potholes and protect county funds from accepting poor drainage designs and roadbuilding for public maintenance. Developers begin a neighborhood by buying land, having it surveyed into lots and submitting a plat to land See County, Page A7.
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ACrOSS THE rivEr John Weaver new coach at PCA B1
Albert F. Chiempraibha M.D.