re: Natchez, MS and the lack of tourism compared with other quaint weekend getaway places

quote:

---

Natchez is a great town with a lot of untapped potential. There were three large factories that all went belly up (Johns Manville, International Paper, and Armstrong Tires).It has a solid tourism base but not one strong enough to power the town by itself.

It needs a factory of some sort in the worst kind of way.

---

It had all of those things and the reason they went belly up was because of pressure from the Garden Club (lotta old money) because they thought the commerce was getting in the way of tourism $$, and if Natchez continued to grow they would lose control of the town. Fast forward 20 years to now. Tourism is FAR lower than they thought even though they spent MILLIONS filling in the big gully and putting a visitors center there, building a humongous conference center, building huge hotels that only stay 1/8 full, and screwing up more the only intersection that I ever thought could not get screwed up more than it was. So now, especially with the oil industry laying everyone off, Natchez is mostly really rich folks or bottom middle class to full-out crack thug poor. The Garden Club shut down IP cuz they swore the smell was affecting tourism, they were key to driving Armstrong and the other factories out. So, the people who needed jobs moved or went to the oil field. Also, the ones who did not want to pay private tuition moved to Vidalia cuz we have the top pub school around. And Vidalia's nothing like Natchez. It's growing, businesses are coming in, and real estate is through the roof. My house I just bought for $210k in Vidalia would have only sold for around $160k or so across the river. So, scenery-wise Natchez is great to visit. But until those old money blue-hairs get ousted from control, I don't want to live there. I mean, they blocked both the Nissan Plant and the WalMart distribution center from coming here. So, those were built in Canton and Brookhaven. Then they turn around and let some other state store their toxic sludge just inside the city limits. How screwed up is that?