NATCHEZ, Miss. – The city and county will pay for tearing down the old A&P grocery store with public-works crews as part of local and state governments’ efforts to accommodate a business promising to bring 200 new jobs to downtown Natchez.
Loss Prevention Services plans to put its corporate headquarters in the former Regions bank building at the corner of Franklin and Pearl streets.
Natchez and Adams County officials have agreed to use city-county workers and their equipment to demolish the long-vacant A&P building on Franklin Street adjacent to the former bank, said Natchez Mayor Dan Gibson. The former grocery will be cleared so LPS can expand and enhance the current parking lot that’s been there.
This is the local governments’ contribution to an incentive to get LPS to expand in Natchez. The state is providing money for infrastructure and parking-lot improvements from the Mississippi Development Authority. MDA is allocating $260,000.
LPS is an information-technology company that helps banks and other lenders find and repossess automobiles from delinquent-paying borrowers throughout the country. It currently has offices in Natchez and Michigan.
LPS announced Sept. 21 that it will put its corporate headquarters in the former Regions building and gradually expand its staff with 200 additional jobs by summer 2022. The 45,000-square-foot downtown building will accommodate about 300 employees for LPS’ operations, which will run 24 hours a day, seven days a week, according to those involved in the business plans.
LPS envisions investing about $3 million on its new Natchez location, which includes the old bank and A&P properties.
Loss Prevention Services – with company Chairman Sterling Gay of Natchez joined by several other Natchezians on its leadership team – describes itself as “a technologically enabled information management company” with the “knowledge and experience needed to successfully reduce delinquent auto portfolios for clients nationwide” and to provide banks with “locate, repossession, and transport services.”
Natchez ended its fiscal year Wednesday with a surplus of nearly $3 million. However, that’s mostly state or federal funds left over for specific projects.
The Natchez Board of Aldermen revised the budget to account for the unspent funds. Mayor Dan Gibson noted the city ended the 12-month budget period without a deficit despite lagging sales tax collections caused by the COVID-induced recession. The downturn began six months ago, when economic activities nationally were stymied and “things were looking so scary,” Gibson said.
Despite that, city officials were able to manage revenues and expenditures to ensure there were no layoffs of municipal employees or a tax increase, he said.
The city began fiscal 2020 a year ago budgeting $37 million in revenues and $36 million in spending. The city wound up Wednesday with $2.9 million in unspent funds, but Gibson said that’s mostly funds from outside grants dedicated for specific projects. That’s not leftover money “to blow and go” on discretionary expenditures, Gibson said.
For the fiscal year that begins today, (Oct. 1), the Board of Aldermen has budgeted about $33 million in revenues and $32 million in spending for the next 12 months.
Indicating the local economy may be rebounding after last spring’s COVID shutdown, sales tax collections for Natchez in June exceeded what the city received a year ago. After four months of declines, the city got about $429,000 — nearly $20,000 more than in June 2019 – according to the state Department of Revenue’s most recent sales tax statistics.
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