Starkville

[NukeDogg]

The idea of recruiting from big cities is a great idea. I always thought they should build an amphitheater like the one in Brandon for events year round. Do you want families to use hotels in the summer? Get hardy to help you book some names in said amphitheater. The city transportation needs to become more reliable so we can access all areas of starkville easily. When I would goto school there I didn’t use my car unless I was going home. I at least like how the city is investing in new “festival type weekends”. King crawfish is amazing I try to go and cook in it every year.

And everybody in the Ludacris thread is b!tching about how it was booked on a bye weekend. We can't make up our minds - do we want festivities on non-home game weekends or not?

 

[8dog]

Y'all are depressing. It's not complicated. Only five years ago OM had HC Matt Luke, AD Ross Bjork, and some dork chancellor whose name I can't remember. They went 5-7 and 4-8 in 2018 and 2019. Their teams sucked, enrollment was down, oxford was stagnant. Then they hired Kiffin, the football program turned around, enrollment is booming, the town is booming, and everything's great for them. It's the football, stupid.

Absolutely part of it. But that town had exponential growth prior to that.

 

[OG Goat Holder]

Interesting bit on the whole 'schools' thing. I know we try and compare ourselves to Oxford and Auburn because they are most similar have some decent schools surrounding their campus, but I just looked up Athens/Clarke County, and both of their schools (including where Georgia sits) are not very good. That said, every school around them varies from average/good (Apalachee, weirdly where the shooting was yesterday) to elite (North Oconee - Adam Frazier representin').

So me personally, we know Starkville schools are as good as they'll ever be, and we know Columbus is as good as it will ever be, West Point, West Lowndes, etc.....We may as well start looking west. Webster County is what will need to develop if we want that coveted public school system that gets ranked highly and attracts people. Of course, North Oconee is about 10 miles from downtown Athens, and in true MS fashion, East Webster is double that. But doable, and closer than Caledonia and New Hope, which are about 30 miles out with Columbus in between.

I mean Starkville is already at the high tax phase. Going to be hard to attract people unless there are some high-paying jobs around.

 

[ETK99]

Where? Tupelo has it's own, south Houston/Amory/Aberdeen folks go there. Columbus has some things, and they used to pull a little of the extreme West Alabama folks due to taxes or something, but again, rural area. After that, what you have? Macon folks? Ackerman? Louisville and Eupora area bout the best you're going to get. Anywhere south of there can just go to Madison/Flowood.

Starkville is going to have to grow itself out of this, where that is Starkville itself or the surrounding immediate areas (East Webster area).

"But location is the biggest problem."

 

[ChE1997]

Interesting bit on the whole 'schools' thing. I know we try and compare ourselves to Oxford and Auburn because they are most similar have some decent schools surrounding their campus, but I just looked up Athens/Clarke County, and both of their schools (including where Georgia sits) are not very good. That said, every school around them varies from average/good (Apalachee, weirdly where the shooting was yesterday) to elite (North Oconee - Adam Frazier representin').

So me personally, we know Starkville schools are as good as they'll ever be, and we know Columbus is as good as it will ever be, West Point, West Lowndes, etc.....We may as well start looking west. Webster County is what will need to develop if we want that coveted public school system that gets ranked highly and attracts people. Of course, North Oconee is about 10 miles from downtown Athens, and in true MS fashion, East Webster is double that. But doable, and closer than Caledonia and New Hope, which are about 30 miles out with Columbus in between.

I mean Starkville is already at the high tax phase. Going to be hard to attract people unless there are some high-paying jobs around.

Make it more friendly to remote working.
Get High speed fiber internet to everyone.
Get flights to Dallas and Houston to attract students and remote workers from the west. (even remote workers have to go to the office sometimes and the 6-8 hours to fly via ATL is a pain in the ***)
Develop somewhere besides south of Starkville.
Make the Hospital system better, and worth partnering with the ones in Ackerman, Macon, Eupora and Louisville.
Get with the surrounding counties to build the area, and not just Starkville.

 

[BIGDAWG44]

And everybody in the Ludacris thread is b!tching about how it was booked on a bye weekend. We can't make up our minds - do we want festivities on non-home game weekends or not?

BB and super Bulldog weekend should be home game events in my opinion.

 

[OG Goat Holder]

Make it more friendly to remote working.
Get High speed fiber internet to everyone.
Get flights to Dallas and Houston to attract students and remote workers from the west. (even remote workers have to go to the office sometimes and the 6-8 hours to fly via ATL is a pain in the ***)
Develop somewhere besides south of Starkville.
Make the Hospital system better, and worth partnering with the ones in Ackerman, Macon, Eupora and Louisville.
Get with the surrounding counties to build the area, and not just Starkville.

Interesting concept, to maybe expand the Golden Triangle montage to Webster, Choctaw, Winston and Noxubee Counties. Of course, they'd all have to be convinced to work together and have Starkville as the centerpiece of a 30-mile radius area. I think you could come up with a pretty good coalition there.

Hard to imagine you'd get everyone on board though. Main idea would be jobs and leaning into the rural nature of the area, and perhaps outdoor recreation that spanned across lines. Natchez Trace, Tenn-Tom, Refuge.....there's potential there.

 

[DAWGSANDSAINTS]

Oxford is nice for a MS town but it isn't the be all end all.

Starkvilles problem is, one it is laid out weird. Downtown is tucked away from the main highways. 82 and 25 completely bypass town and people get this perception there is "nothing there". Two, it is a "geographical oddity, two hours from everywhere." Oh...and three Tuscaloosa is to damn close.

Oxford is one little main road. Granted they've had some growth on 7 and 6 but people drive through their Generica and people get this perception there is a decent size town there but it isn't. It's a tiny town. Oxford gets more traffic and word of mouth because it is an hour from Desoto /Memphis.

Seemingly every John Grisham book lately mentions Oxford and Ole Miss as does several other books by other writers with characters either from the South or MS and they almost always have a connection to Oxford and or Ole Miss

 

[DAWGSANDSAINTS]

Along these same lines, is it true that the school has told sororities and fraternities they can't allow freshmen to go out to bars? Someone told me that at the game and it sounds ridiculous. Are we only recruiting the amish now? Does anyone know if that's true, or what the actual story is? I find it hard to believe.

Alabama sororities have a strict no bar rule with their freshmen girls.
I would guess that’s fairly standard across most in the Deep South.
Fraternities I have no idea about but I would think that’s not nearly as strict or enforced.

 

[ChE1997]

Interesting concept, to maybe expand the Golden Triangle montage to Webster, Choctaw, Winston and Noxubee Counties. Of course, they'd all have to be convinced to work together and have Starkville as the centerpiece of a 30-mile radius area. I think you could come up with a pretty good coalition there.

Hard to imagine you'd get everyone on board though. Main idea would be jobs and leaning into the rural nature of the area, and perhaps outdoor recreation that spanned across lines. Natchez Trace, Tenn-Tom, Refuge.....there's potential there.

I'm sure there will be pushback. Too many supervisors want to operated like they did in the 1980's https://mississippiencyclopedia.org/entries/operation-pretense/

It doesn't have to be all at once. The nice houses in Starkville area are down Oktok and South Montgomery. You can get to from Downtown Starkville to Louisville, Ackerman, and Mathison as fast as to there.

 

[Mjoelner]

I like the railroad hiking trail idea. Too bad you couldn’t have a monorail type train that ran from Columbus and Tupelo using that old rail line.

I would put a trolley on the old rail through town running from the CD to Cornerstone with stops at the farmer's market, Montgomery St. for the Grill, Jackson St. for Georgia Blue, 44 Prime, Rosey Baby and SDN game day parking, Hwy 12 for Enterprise Rental Car then on to Cornerstone unless other stops were wanted at some of the shopping/fast food places out on 12.
For walking, you can hit Chadwick Lake on campus, walk around the CD or hit one of the trails that was shown on the Cornerstone renderings.

 

[BIGDAWG44]

I would put a trolley on the old rail through town running from the CD to Cornerstone with stops at the farmer's market, Montgomery St. for the Grill, Jackson St. for Georgia Blue, 44 Prime, Rosey Baby and SDN game day parking, Hwy 12 for Enterprise Rental Car then on to Cornerstone unless other stops were wanted at some of the shopping/fast food places out on 12.
For walking, you can hit Chadwick Lake on campus, walk around the CD or hit one of the trails that was shown on the Cornerstone renderings.

This would be amazing.

 

[Mr. Cook]

I mean Starkville is already at the high tax phase. Going to be hard to attract people unless there are some high-paying jobs around.

Your whole thread is spot-on but…..

 

[Mr. Cook]

"But location is the biggest problem."

 

[Mr. Cook]

“Stark”

Not this:

But this:

 

[Fighting Irish.sixpack]

What is it about Spruill that you don't like? I know the property taxes are high but outside of that - she seems to be a decent mayor from afar.

Liberal. Idiot. Cannot see past her nose. Pay for parking. Grab *** streets in need of repair. Stop lights from the 1970’s that are not on traffic flow sensors. Property taxes. *****. Idiot. Liberal.