Midtown Partners works to ensure that Midtown is a vibrant, healthy, and safe community for families and businesses.

Education

Midtown Partners realizes that investing in a child’s education is fundamental for the ongoing success of a community. A solid educational foundation for Midtown’s children generates a more prosperous, self-sufficient, and vibrant community. Towards that end, Midtown Partners oversees two neighborhood schools to serve the Midtown community, Little Samaritan Montessori Center and Midtown Public Charter School.

Affordable Housing

Midtown Partners works to eliminate blight and provide affordable housing opportunities for residents of Midtown. Recently, Midtown Partners successfully leveraged Blight Elimination Program funding to raze 15 blighted properties to pave the way for 34 affordable housing units on Midtown’s south side funded with low income housing tax credits, representing an investment of over $10 million dollars.

Community Engagement

No Midtown Partners project happens without significant community input and buy-in. Midtown Partners builds relationships with Midtown residents and businesses by organizing communal activities and involving community leaders in every decision. It was Midtown residents who decided to first create a middle school and expand into the elementary grades. It was Midtown residents who decided that the neighborhood would benefit from an outdoor family- and pet-friendly beer garden with gallery space to showcase Midtown artists.

Health and Safety

Midtown Partners has made progress in its effort to expand community gardens and recreational urban green spaces to increase Midtown families’ ability to interact with the natural environment. Projects are also underway to modernize and maintain Midtown’s existing parks.

Midtown Partners offers a Meals With Wheels program for Midtown’s senior and/or disabled residents. Midtown Partners’ own community kitchen provides a hot, nutritious, home-delivered lunch to roughly 20 Midtown residents 3 days a week.

Midtown Partners works closely with the City of Jackson, Hinds County, the Jackson Police Department, and Nearview Security, a Midtown-based security company, to ensure that Midtown streets are as safe as possible. Midtown Partners is actively trying to reduce the number of through streets and derelict properties in the neighborhood, increase safe streets with ADA access, and improve lighting conditions throughout the neighborhood.

Economic Security

Midtown Partners has launched a number of initiatives designed to promote economic opportunities for Midtown residents and businesses. These can take may shapes, from easier access to homeowner educational and financial resources, to the creation of business development incubators, such as The Hatch, a 10,000 square-foot mixed-use space that currently houses Mississippi Cold Drip Coffee and Tea Co. and Nick Wallace Culinary.

Midtown Partners established the Prosperity Center of Greater Jackson which served as a one-stop shop facility designed around core principles and a framework with a primary focus on serving low-income families in efforts to assist them in entering/reentering the workforce.

Economic Development

Midtown has been home to several generations of artists. The neighborhood has served as a hub for creativity and innovation where young artists get their start and established artists grow their roots. Until 2020, the arts in Midtown were building momentum and attracting creative talent with staying power, indicated by many new business owners and artists purchasing buildings and investing personal and financial capital.

The pandemic brought the dynamic growth of Midtown’s Arts District to a standstill. The benefits of the arts go well beyond the aesthetic. They have a substantial impact on our city’s social, civic, cultural, and economic well-being. The arts don’t just preserve and celebrate culture. As creative and artistic enterprises arise, ancillary businesses form around them, creating jobs and stimulating local economies.

If we want the Midtown Arts District to return to pre-COVID trends and continue to be an economic engine for the neighborhood, investing in the creative economy will help this crucial sector recover while also fueling the overall economic growth for Midtown and for Jackson.