# The DPS Tower Is Gone. What Happens to the Corner Is Undecided. > The state imploded the 50-year-old Department of Public Safety headquarters at I-55 and Woodrow Wilson Avenue on Sunday morning. It has announced no plan for the land. Nearby, UMMC's $250 million cancer center is about to break ground, and a 60,000-seat stadium's future is tied to it. *Development · By Jackson Wire Staff · October 4, 2026* Sunday morning, with Interstate 55 closed from Lakeland Drive to Fortification Street, explosives placed through all five floors of the former Mississippi Department of Public Safety headquarters at 1900 East Woodrow Wilson Avenue fired in sequence and the tower came down. WLBT, which carried the implosion live, reported the road closures began at 7:45 a.m.; the governor's office had said they would last about 30 minutes. The building had stood since 1976. The state's reason was structural. Public Safety Commissioner Sean Tindell told WLBT on Friday that the tower 'was starting to sink into the ground,' and that it could not be taken down with ordinary equipment because of how it was built. 'One of the things that makes it unique is the way that building was built was with a lot of concrete,' he said. 'And it goes all the way down, 20 feet down. So it is a very heavily fortified building.' Demolition work on the site was already under way by mid-July, when WLBT reported a yellow fence blocking the access road. The tower was dedicated June 15, 1976, with Lt. Gov. Evelyn Gandy and T.B. Birdsong, the first chief of the Mississippi Highway Patrol, in attendance, and it was named for Birdsong, according to WLBT. Construction began in 1974 and cost just over $4 million. For half a century it held the department's administration, the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation, and the state's main driver services station. Its replacement is not in Jackson. In April the department opened a $70 million, 146,000-square-foot headquarters in Pearl, next to the state crime lab, named for former Commissioner David Huggins. Construction began in 2019. The move consolidated 11 divisions that had been scattered across the metro, including offices at Jackson State University, in Byram, and in north Jackson, under one roof for the first time, according to WLBT and Magnolia Tribune. The Wire's observation: for the capital city, that is a state headquarters and its daily workforce, and whatever those workers spent near the office, moved to Pearl. What happens to the land is undecided. Tindell said the Department of Finance and Administration and the Bureau of Buildings will determine the property's use. He also said what he thinks it is good for. 'I think the UMMC campus is obviously growing,' he told WLBT on Friday. 'It's bigger. And that's such a high-profile corner as well. If there was a multi-use project done there, whether it be some sort of hotel and commercial development — all those are very viable uses, because when somebody's going to the cancer center or they're staying in any of the hospitals there, the veterans hospital, folks need somewhere to stay.' The Wire found no request for proposals, legislative authorization, or appraisal for the site in the records it could reach, and no such step has been reported. The corner matters for what surrounds it. Along the same avenue, the University of Mississippi Medical Center is weeks from breaking ground on its Cancer Center and Research Institute, a five-story, 250,000-square-foot building priced at $250 million and meant to win Mississippi its first National Cancer Institute designation. The Legislature put $100 million of state capital money into it in the budget Gov. Tate Reeves signed in April, and UMMC's private campaign has passed 80 percent of its $125 million goal, with $25 million from Sandy and John Black, $10 million each from the Gertrude C. Ford Foundation and the Bower Foundation, $5 million from C Spire, and, on Oct. 1, $2.5 million from Regions Bank. WLBT reported that day that groundbreaking is expected within the month. Also on Woodrow Wilson is Mississippi Veterans Memorial Stadium, 60,492 seats, opened in 1950, owned and operated by Jackson State since 2011, and the subject of an argument that dates to a 2011 law setting the property to pass to UMMC once Jackson State got a new stadium. Jackson State never got one. In the 2026 session, House Bill 117, sponsored by Rep. Robert Johnson, would have put $40 million of seed money toward planning a roughly $250 million stadium; it died in committee in February. A second bill, House Bill 1121, would have authorized the university to build at a separate location and transferred the stadium property to Jackson State and UMMC; the Wire could not confirm whether it advanced, and no report of its passage has surfaced. Johnson told WLBT in January that UMMC's expansion plans had changed and that there was now uncertainty about the property the stadium sits on. The Wire wrote about the stalemate in August. City Councilman Kenneth Stokes, for his part, tied the stadium push directly to the cancer center's expansion. The VA medical center at 1500 East Woodrow Wilson is the veterans hospital Tindell was pointing at. The first page of the county tax roll for East Woodrow Wilson Avenue reads like a list of governments: the State of Mississippi, UMMC, the Mississippi Transportation Commission, and the United States all appear as owners, with a handful of private owners between them. Put the pieces together and the shape of the next decade on Woodrow Wilson is visible even though no one has drawn it. A new cancer center will bring patients and families from across the state who need somewhere to stay, which is exactly the use the commissioner floated for the DPS corner. A stadium whose replacement bills died in committee in 2025 and again this year sits on land that a 2011 law routes to the medical center. And the parcel the state appears to hold at the interchange has no announced plan attached to it. That is the opening. State land typically leaves state hands one of three ways: a transfer to another agency; a lease or sale through the Bureau of Buildings, which typically requires an appraisal and public notice; or a legislative act that names the recipient, which is how the stadium was handled in 2011. Each of those leaves a paper trail, and the Wire found none for 1900 East Woodrow Wilson. What's next: Groundbreaking on the UMMC cancer center, expected by early November. Any Department of Finance and Administration notice, appraisal, or legislative request concerning 1900 East Woodrow Wilson, which the Wire's public notice and legislative feeds will flag. And the stadium bill, which its sponsor has promised will return. --- _Reporting note: Demolition details, the commissioner's quotes, and the building's history are from WLBT's reports of July 15, Oct. 2, and Oct. 4, 2026, and the governor's office release announcing the Oct. 4 demolition. The Pearl headquarters figures are from WLBT and Magnolia Tribune coverage of the April 21 opening. Cancer center funding is from SuperTalk Mississippi and WLBT; stadium legislation from WLBT and HBCU Gameday. The Wire could not reach the Legislature's bill-status site to confirm the disposition of House Bill 1121. Parcel ownership is from the first page of the Hinds County tax roll for East Woodrow Wilson Avenue; the Wire did not locate the 1900 parcel's own entry. The Wire did not contact the Department of Finance and Administration before publication._ --- [The Jackson Wire](https://www.thejacksonwire.com/) · [Read on the web](https://www.thejacksonwire.com/article/dps-tower-implosion-woodrow-wilson-what-comes-next)