BILOXI, MS - Hurricane Katrina wiped out the mostly residential Pine Street neighborhood in East Biloxi. Now the property owners are looking for developers to rebuild the area with restaurants, housing, shops and entertainment venues. One of the properties is a five-acre lot just north of Fifth Street where Tom Brosig envisions four or five restaurants like Wolfgang Puck's. "That quality, that level" of branded, recognizable restaurants, said attorney Michael Cavanaugh, who is representing the neighbors.
The location is just north of the Grand Biloxi and Margaritaville casinos, west of the Palace and Isle of Capri casinos and south of the casinos on the bay, "right in the middle of everything," said Cavanaugh. If the residents, who have formed the Pine Street Development Committee, and developers can create a zone and define it as a tourist destination, "It will draw people there," he said, "especially if it's a loop street."
Pine Street is the last leg of the Casino Loop in East Biloxi, which already connects Beach Boulevard on the south to Caillavet on the west to Bayview on the north. The city has budgeted $750,000 to complete the loop, and Cavanaugh said Pine Street is the closest road that can be a thoroughfare, since all the land to the edge of Pine is already zoned waterfront or could be. Cavanaugh also represented several of the Pine Street neighbors who last year banded together to have their collective properties zoned waterfront. That zoning is necessary for a casino site and also permits hotels, shopping and multifamily housing.
"It's very preliminary," Cavanaugh said of the plans he showed to the Biloxi Planning Commission recently. Similar to the Oak Street neighbors, who are working together to determine how they want their street to redevelop, the Pine Street neighbors decided to chart their own destiny. They have identified "this is where and what we think will work." The property owners are mixed nationalities, including some Vietnamese, and they see a mixed use for their neighborhood with some housing but mostly commercial. "They're talking about duplexes, townhouses and lofts," said Cavanaugh.
With Harrah's planning to widen sections of U.S. 90 for Margaritaville Casino, now may be the time to complete Pine Street, Cavanaugh said, and the neighbors would like it to be a boulevard with trees in the center. There are a lot of developers out there who want to build and invest in Biloxi, and Cavanaugh said that by creating this plan, "It makes the developer understand that you have willing landowners."
Source: SunHerald.com