The Jackson Redevelopment Authority is accepting redevelopment proposals on its own parcels in the 200 and 300 blocks of North Farish Street until Oct. 30 at 4 p.m. Central Time, under a Phase II solicitation the authority opened Aug. 31. The deadline is 25 days out and the authority has posted two pre-proposal webinar recordings, Sept. 8 and Sept. 29, for anyone who wants to bid.

The parcels are not a mystery. JRA publishes its Farish Street inventory with an asking price on each one. The largest single listing is parcel 84-16 at 202-216 North Farish Street, 0.534 acres, priced at $440,320. Next is 83-5 at 324-334 North Farish Street, 0.492 acres, at $262,610, then 86-50 at 229-235 North Farish Street, 0.301 acres, at $144. That last figure is not a typo. The authority's own list carries it as $144.

Add the Farish Street-tagged listings on the JRA property page and the total asking price comes to roughly $1.9 million across about 8.5 acres. The Wire's count of the page finds 38 Farish Street parcels, and the median asking price is under $10,000. Most of the inventory is not the storefront blocks. It is small vacant lots on Alba Street, North Roach Street and West Griffith Street, some under 0.05 acres, priced between $440 and $8,500.

That split matters for anyone trying to read what JRA is actually selling. The Phase II RFP is limited to the 200 and 300 blocks of North Farish Street, the historic commercial spine. The cheap scattered lots are elsewhere in the district and are not what this solicitation is about. A bidder who wants the storefronts is bidding against a short list of parcels, not the whole 125-acre district.

The RFP language is broad on use. According to the solicitation posted at jrams.org, JRA welcomes concepts consistent with applicable zoning, historic-preservation requirements, the Farish Street Historic District Design Guidelines and the authority's redevelopment objectives. Respondents may bid on one property or several. The authority has not published a minimum price for the Phase II parcels, so the property-page figures are the only public price signal.

There is a history here that bidders and residents both know. Farish Street was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1980 as the largest economically independent Black community in Mississippi, according to the Mississippi Encyclopedia. In 2002 the city signed a 45-year lease with Performa Entertainment Real Estate to develop the entertainment district on the two blocks between Amite and Hamilton. That project went dormant in 2014 after the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development found federal funds had been misspent.

The current effort is running on a different track. JRA Executive Director Alex Lawson has described the new Farish Street Green as low-hanging fruit, telling the Mississippi Free Press that the buildings themselves need a lot of work. The green space, a $1.5 million project funded mainly by a U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service grant with additional money from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, CoBank and Nissan, opened Monday on the west side of the street with a lawn, benches, a stage and a shade trellis.

The money question is who carries the risk on the storefronts. JRA owns the parcels and sets the asking prices, so the authority is the seller and the price-setter. A developer who buys at the listed figure and then has to satisfy the historic district design guidelines takes on the renovation cost, which on 1890-to-1930 masonry buildings is the expensive part. The public side has already spent the green-space money. The private side would carry the buildings.

One number worth watching is the gap between the asking prices and what the market will pay. The 2023 JRA solicitation for designated properties ran monthly through December of that year with a 5 p.m. deadline each round. This Phase II round is a single Oct. 30 deadline, which suggests the authority wants a decision rather than an open-ended listing.

Lawson has pointed to downtown housing demand as the strongest signal in the district, citing Lennon Court, a 67-unit development near Farish Street, with a waiting list he described as numbering in the thousands. That is the case for residential conversion of upper floors on the Farish blocks. It is also the case a bidder would make to a lender.

What's next: Proposals are due to JRA by 4 p.m. Central Time on Oct. 30, submitted through the portal at jrams.org. The JRA board of commissioners meets on the fourth Wednesday of the month at 10 a.m. at Union Station, 300 West Capitol Street, which puts the next regular meeting on Oct. 28, two days before the deadline. Watch whether the board takes up the Phase II responses at its November meeting and whether it publishes a shortlist. Lawson is the official who would answer what happens to bids that come in below the listed prices.

The other date to hold is the Farish Street Green build-out. The stage had not been built as of the Oct. 5 opening, and the east-side Urban Forest portion with its gravel paths and trees is a separate phase. JRA has not published a completion date for either, and the authority's administrative coordinator, LaToshia Goodrich, is the contact for meeting access if the board schedules a special session on the RFP.