Adaptive reuse of a 50,000 sq. ft. registered historic factory/warehouse into a learn/work hub containing an entrepreneurial center, a graduate center, a State Technology Transfer Center, and a craft brewery.

Challenges:

As a federally registered historic building, there was the familiar (yet always tough) epic tug-of-war between the program, existing conditions, code-mandated improvements, MEP system requirements, historic preservation requirements, and The project budget. We worked through challenges related to a constrained site, steep topography, retaining walls holding up a 150 year old street, massive mechanical systems, and refurbishing the historic (but highly deteriorated) steel framed single pane windows. Cadence Bank provided investment and debt financing to the Mississippi Center for Innovation and Technology (MCITy), the core of a new economic model for Vicksburg and Central Mississippi.

Located in the former Mississippi Hardware Building in historic Downtown Vicksburg, the new 50,000-sq. ft. facility will be the center for innovation, training, education and technology transfer. The project will create jobs by accelerating technology transfer between the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Research and Development Center (ERDC) and small- and medium-sized businesses while bringing higher educational opportunities to citizens of the entire region and encouraging innovation in a variety of ways.

ERDCWERX, the technology transfer partner for the ERDC, Vicksburg-Warren Partnership, the primary local economic development driver, Mississippi State University’s Entrepreneurship Center, Hinds Community College, a leading workforce trainer, Mississippi Institutions of Higher Learning, which has technology connectivity to the state’s four research universities.