The Mississippi Arts Center in downtown Jackson lacked air conditioning for a year, leaving it too hot for tenants to work there.
Now, after the installation of a new air conditioning system, the building at 201 E. Pascagoula St. is freezing cold for some tenants and warm for others.
“We are waiting for public works to order the boiler and controls for the HVAC system,” said David Lewis, deputy director of cultural affairs for the city of Jackson.
The freezing temperature combined with other issues have forced Opera Mississippi and the Mississippi Symphony Orchestra to work off site and limit their office hours at the arts center.
Jay Dean, artistic director and conductor for Opera Mississippi, outlined the troubles in an e-mail to the organization’s board members:
“The Arts Center has been plagued with problems over the last two years ranging from no HVAC for over a year, to water leaks in the ceiling that have caused ceiling tiles to fall in, furniture damage, and ruined carpet in the office. Also, the only bathrooms in the building have either been under renovation for over a year or have been out of order for an extended period of time.
“The building finally got a new chilling system about a month ago, but, as I understand it, the contractor did not include temperature regulators (thermostats). Therefore, the building is very cold and humid all the time, which is what (I am told) is causing the water leaks, excess condensation, and humidity in our office.
“Because of the excess humidity, today we discovered that we now have mildew growing on our furniture. So essentially it has become an unhealthy environment in which to work. Therefore, we cannot require people to go into that kind of situation on a daily basis without risking some sort of health issue.”
Stacey Trenteseaux., executive director of Opera Mississippi, and Kristen Dreaper, administrative director, are working from home until the situation can be resolved, Dean said.
“I realize we benefit from having a facility like this and I don’t mean to sound like I’m complaining but we have a hard-enough time dealing with the day-to-day business stuff,” he said.
The city’s slow-moving ways of taking care of business are frustrating, Dean said, but he doesn’t blame it on Lewis.
“He is trying as hard as he can to get things done,” he said. We appreciate him.”
The Mississippi Symphony Orchestra (MSO) offices are also in bad shape.
“We have a ceiling that water flows through,” said Jenny Mann, president and executive director of the MSO. “It’s been like that for many years. We call it our water feature.”
The temperature in the MSO office suite fluctuates with Mann’s workspace being warm while that of Richard Hudson, director of operations and personnel, is so cold he brought in a heater to make it tolerable, she said.
Like Opera Mississippi, the MSO has mildew growing in its carpet and on its office furniture. The humidity even influences the copier’s performance.
“Sometimes the copier ink will not adhere because it’s too moist in the office,” Mann said.
The MSO staff has adapted by working offsite with minimal office hours, which limits the time musicians can pick up music for performances and handle other matters and patrons can purchase tickets in person. Staff meetings are held at Broadstreet Baking Co & Café instead of at the arts center.
The arts center space is useful because the MSO’s sheet music library is housed there and the MSO’s timpani and drums are stored there since Thalia Mara Hall, where many performances are held, has no storage space, she said.
Lewis said he has passed along maintenance requests from both the opera and symphony to the city’s facilities and care and maintenance division of public works as well as concerns about the temperature in the arts center.
The arts center isn’t the only building that the city owns that needs maintenance. The Eudora Welty Library, once the flagship of the Jackson-Hinds Library System, is plagued by leaks and mold, which were caused by lack of regular maintenance.
Ashby Foote, who represents Ward 1 and serves as president of the city council, has often said the city owns more buildings that it has funds to maintain.
The Jackson City Council voted at its Aug. 30 meeting to pay Universal Services, LLC in the amount of $263,200 for replacing the failed cooling tower at the arts center. Universal Services completed the work, which included removal of the existing cooling tower, chillers, pumps and associated piping and replacement with a new chiller, chilled water pumps and piping on June 23.
Mona Nicholas, who heads the USA International Ballet Competition, one of the most prestigious ballet competitions in the world, sympathizes with the opera and orchestra.
“It’s like we take one step forward and one step back,” she said. “It’s really a nice building that’s been neglected. It’s deferred maintenance like you wouldn’t believe.”
The USA IBC continues to work in office space that Jones Walker law firm provides and has done so since the building’s air conditioner failed in 2021.
“We’ve been taking time to clean out and go through files,” Nicholas said. “We haven’t moved back in. We hope by the first of October we’ll be moved back in.”
A break-in at the arts center over Labor Day weekend wreaked havoc for some organizations that found their offices turned upside down, she said.
Plywood covers broken glass at an entrance to the back of the arts center, a set of windows with broken glass at the front of the building and another set of windows at the back of the building. (Lewis expects the windows, which required a special type of glass that had to be ordered, to be repaired soon.)
Someone removed the plywood from the entrance and used a hammer to knock off doorknobs inside the building and ransacked some of the offices.
“I called Capitol Police and reported the break-in,” Nicholas said. “It was an ordeal. We had just cleaned up our office and didn’t have much of anything there, but they messed it all up.”
The orchestra discovered the plight of all the doorknobs in its offices and that someone had gone through the desks and tried to get into laptops, Mann said. “He was looking for cash,” she said, noting that security cameras captured an image of the person responsible.
Ballet Mississippi has not suffered with the freezing temps and its offices were not vandalized, said David Keary, artistic and executive director of Ballet Mississippi,
“We’re running classes Monday through Thursday and in Madison, too,” he said, noting that rehearsals for The Nutcracker are under way and back on a normal schedule for the production compared to what it has been in recent years.
Both Mann and Nicholas consider security at the building a concern.
Nicholas said she would like the Jackson Police Department or Capitol Police to set up an office at the arts center and have a presence especially when the arts organizations offer classes for children. “They could set up in the foyer and we would have built-in security,” she said.
The arts center houses not only the Mississippi Symphony Orchestra, Opera Mississippi, the USA IBC and Ballet Mississippi but also the Greater Jackson Arts Council, Art For All Mississippi and the International Museum of Muslim Cultures, none of which pay rent for their space.
“We don’t pay anything directly to be there but our economic impact is $12.5 million every four years for the IBC,” Nicholas said, noting that the impact of all the arts organizations is even greater and so is their contribution to the quality of life in the city of Jackson.
