By David A. Farrell, Item Staff Writer
The Picayune Item
PICAYUNE —
Building contractor Derwin Whitfield said a 39-room expansion of the Heritage Inn, in the southwest corner of Interstate 59’s Exit 4 and next door to Hardee’s, should be completed by October.
The new structure is being constructed directly behind the old section of the motel and will be a two-story structure with an interior corridor and elevators.
“It will be very nice,” said Whitfield, who owns the construction company Heritage Homes, Inc., which has the contract for the expansion. There’s no connection to the motel.
He does not own any of Heritage Inn, but he and his father originally established it and sold it to the Patel family, who live in Picayune and run the motel.
Whitfield said that the expansion of the motel shows that despite the downturn in business, “there are some bright spots in the local economy.
“Right now we are busy; we have several things going on,” he said.
“I know other places, like in Atlanta where my son works, that are having a tough time,” Whitfield said.
The economy here, as it is nationwide, is spotty. Some builders, real estate agents and contractors seem to be doing well, while others say times are suffering.
Contractor Glen Rayburn said this week that “things are slow for us, but we have several things still going on that are carrying us through.
“The year started out real good for us, but it seems the summer is slow,” he said.
He said that business definitely dropped after the federally sponsored tax incentive program lapsed in the Spring and the Congress did not renew it.
“When that was in effect, that definitely helped us, and if you calculate the extra business just one house generates, the sales taxes, income and property taxes, the program should have been made permanent, I think. It paid itself back many times over,” he said.
The program gave a first-time homebuyer an $8,000 deduction.
Realtor James Fleming, who has been in the real estate business in Pearl River County for about four decades, said business is “up and down.”
“That is the way the real estate business is,” he said this week. “You have your good times when business is booming and then your bad times. I really don’t like to talk about it, because it seems like things get worse if you go around talking negative.
“After Katrina we sold a lot of real estate and we thought we were going to be rich, but after about a year, it dropped back down; so you can see, it’s up and down,” Fleming said.
There are other local highlights despite the bad economic news and in addition to the Heritage Inn expansion.
The Chimney Square county office complex on Goodyear Boulevard is landscaped and awaiting occupancy; Highland Community Hospital is in the midst of site preparation and is expecting to handle its first patient at its new facility in North Picayune in the summer of 2012; the county is well underway on construction of a $3 million Health and Human Services structure at Millard that will centralize all welfare services in one place; and Ty Gill is nearing completion on a 60-apartment complex in Burgetown Community.
Additionally, other construction projects in the works call for installation of a connector road from Anchor Lake to Exit 10 on the east side of I-59; a four-lane expansion of Mississippi Highway 43 South into Picayune, running from Interstate 10 near Kiln to I-59; and there are numerous bridge projects and upgrades underway in the county by supervisors.
