The site of the former Charles Tisdale Library will soon be nothing but an empty lot.
Socrates Garrett Enterprises is handling demolition of the building and property at 807 E. Northside Drive. The city of Jackson is paying $48,500 for the tear down of the building and cleanup of the property, which it owns.
The project also includes backfilling, compacting and leveling the in-ground stairwell, with all loose debris to be first removed.
City Council President Ashby Foote of Ward 1 would have preferred the city to sell the building instead of paying to demolish it.
Closed in April 2017 after storm-related flooding resulted in black mold growing inside, the former library was in a sad state both inside and outside before demolition began and had attracted homeless people.
Michelle Hudson, a Jackson resident who worked as a librarian for a year at the Tisdale Library when it was known as the Northside Library and then at the Eudora Welty Library, considers it shameful the city failed to maintain the building and allowed the books inside to become infested with mold.
“It didn’t have to happen,” she said. “It was a wonderful branch that served children in the neighborhood and the schools nearby. To let it sit there and rot...how does this make our city look?”
Floyd Council, executive director of the Jackson-Hinds Library System, sent out an email on Oct. 14 saying that the Eudora Welty Library on North State Street, which has been closed for four months due to failed HVAC units, would reopen to the public on Oct. 17, subject to temperature monitoring.
Council in his email commended the city of Jackson “for taking leadership efforts to remove the Tisdale building that has been in disrepair for more than 15 years.”
