NATCHEZ, Miss. — Tearing down the downtown Fry building could begin in October as city officials envision the site becoming a parking lot, according to plans discussed Tuesday at the Natchez Board of Aldermen’s meeting.
The board agreed to ask for the Natchez Preservation Commission’s permission to demolish the three-story office building adjacent to the Eola hotel that developers plan to renovate and reopen.
Located on the corner of Pearl and Franklin streets, the Fry building has deteriorated, is laden with asbestos and has been largely vacant for several years. It was donated to the city by Walter Davis III in 2021 with an appraised value of about $1 million.
The city has commissioned environmental assessments of the structure. It’s contaminated with hazardous asbestos and other pollutants, according to a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency report. The EPA awarded the city a $1.1 million grant in 2023 for clean-up costs.
The Fry’s demolition is being paid for with such federal funds along with a possible loan if needed from the Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality, said Mayor Dan Gibson. The city has applied for $500,000 from the agency’s so-called Brownfields Revolving Loan Fund that’s programmed for cleaning up polluted sites that can be rehabilitated and redeveloped for commercial purposes.
“This is yet another example of a brownfield turning into a greenfield – and that’s green as in the color of money,” Gibson said.
Making the Fry site a parking lot is considered an essential key for renovating the century-old Eola – plans that have been much-ballyhooed but stalled for several years since the hotel closed in 2014.
Inflation has been a major impediment as renovation costs have soared to about $30 million, but Eola developer Hayes Dent has expressed optimism that financing would be assured for its refurbishment and reopening. This comes as the building approaches being 100 years old in 2027.
While the timetable for razing the Fry building is “not set in stone” yet, hopes are demolition will start in October, said city Community Development Director James Johnston. “We’re working toward that goal.”
Tearing down the 1950s-built Fry needs the approval of the Natchez Preservation Commission, which ensures structural changes are appropriate in the city’s historic district that covers downtown Natchez and surrounding residential neighborhoods.
The Fry building was constructed as an office building in 1956 and designed by prominent New Orleans architect Arthur Davis, according to Trulia.com, a subsidiary of the real-estate listing group Zillow.
Davis was described as a “modernist architect who was instrumental in redefining New Orleans’ skyline” by The Times-Picayune newspaper when he died in 2011 at age 91. His architectural firm’s list of buildings include the Louisiana Superdome, the University of New Orleans Lakefront Arena and the city’s Royal Sonesta Hotel, according to Davis’ autobiography “It Happened by Design.”
Oh, so now, after all of that, years in the making, they have to ask the Preservation Commission? What if they say, no? I’d be very surprised if anything happens here or the Eola before they both fall down and we get to use the $1.1 million to clean it up. Just another unkept promise here. Stringing us along.