# Jackson Tabled a $111,000 Option on 93 Pearl River Acres. The Appraisals Behind It Are the Story.

> Two March appraisals valued the city's riverfront tract at $110,000 and $112,000, based on comparable sales of $1,566 and $3,500 an acre. The developer's own consultant says comparable land costs up to $1 million an acre to make buildable.

*Development · By Jackson Wire Staff · October 8, 2026*

The Jackson City Council tabled a deal Tuesday that would have locked in a purchase price of roughly $111,000 for 93 acres of city-owned land along the Pearl River, and the appraisals behind that number are the part of the record worth reading closely.

In March 2026 the city obtained two appraisals of the tract, which runs between Fortification Street and the J.H. Fewell Water Treatment Plant, with a small piece in Flowood. Crook Appraisal Consultants put fair market value at $112,000. Casey W. Wingfield put it at $110,000, according to WLBT's account of the documents.

The appraisers leaned on comparable sales that work out to $1,566 an acre in Rankin County in September 2022 and $3,500 an acre in Madison County in October 2023. Crook's report describes the site as primarily wooded bottomland inside a FEMA flood hazard area. Divide the $111,000 midpoint by 93 acres and the city is agreeing to about $1,194 an acre, roughly three quarters of the Madison County comparable and about 76 percent of it, for land that sits inside the city limits on a navigable river.

That is the arithmetic Councilman Ashby Foote objected to. "If we just okayed this and sold the option for $1,000, and then two months from now, it became worth $20 million, we would look pretty foolish if we just agreed to it," the Ward 1 councilman said, according to WLBT. "The value of the land would increase dramatically, perhaps 10 to 20 times the value of this."

The buyer is LeFleur Development LLC, whose members WLBT lists as William Richardson, Conrad Ebner, Robert Gibbs, Richard McNeel and Clarence Chapman. The terms are unusually cheap for the buyer: $1,000 for a one-year option running to October 31, 2027, then $2,000 a year to extend it as far as October 31, 2031. Over the full five years the city would collect $9,000 for the right to buy 93 acres at a fixed price.

The city's exposure is not the option fee. It is the ceiling. If the legislature authorizes a casino and the land becomes a resort site, the city has already agreed to a price set by an appraisal of swampy bottomland. City Attorney and interim Chief Administrative Officer Drew Martin told the council the contract carries protections: the option is cancelable by the city at any time before it is exercised, and reverter clauses return the property if nothing is built. "I don't think the purchasers like those agreements very much, by the way," Martin said. "But those provisions are all in those agreements currently to protect the city."

LeFleur's Richardson told the council the acreage will cost millions to develop because of the swampy conditions, and said comparable land elsewhere runs as much as $1 million an acre to prepare. That figure is the tell. If the site needs $1 million an acre of fill, grading and floodplain work, the finished land is worth a multiple of what the raw bottomland appraises for, and the city has agreed to sell at the raw number.

The revenue pitch is $24 million a year in new sales and property taxes and 2,600 direct jobs, per Richardson. Set that against the budget the council adopted in September, which Mississippi Today reported is nearly 20 percent smaller than last year's after the city confronted a shortfall that WLBT has put at more than $30 million. The $24 million would cover most of one year's gap. It would not arrive for years, and only if the legislature acts first.

That is the second gate, and it is the one that has closed twice. Rep. Chris Bell, a Jackson Democrat, authored the City of Jackson Revitalization Act in 2025 as HB 1879; it died on the House floor in February 2025 when Ways and Means Chairman Trey Lamar moved to table it for lack of support, the Magnolia Tribune reported. Bell filed the same concept again in 2026 as HB 1702, which would create a leisure and recreation district and allow a single casino project in the capital city.

Ward 3 Councilman Kenneth Stokes reached back further, to a $600 million resort, hotel and casino that a Detroit firm called Xanadu proposed for Jackson in the mid-1990s and that lawmakers never allowed. "It's not going to be an easy sell for this city because as many people in that legislature that hate Jackson and they don't want Jackson to have additional moneys," Stokes said. Bell told WLBT a similar bill next year would likely face an uphill fight in the Senate, and said the version he is contemplating bundles incentives for the UMMC cancer clinic, the JSU stadium and business tax rebates to broaden its support.

Council President Vernon Hartley asked the question the record does not answer: whether the administration ran any competition before settling on LeFleur. "In other words, was there any competition, or is this the only proposal we examined?" he asked. Mayor John Horhn said the group approached the city. WLBT reported that city calendar entries show Horhn met former Gov. Haley Barbour, who was advising the LeFleur group, in August 2025, and that in February Barbour asked Horhn to write a letter supporting the casino to the Hinds County Legislative Delegation. The city's Surplus Property Committee declared the parcels surplus on August 20, 2026.

What's next: the council has not set a date to take the option agreement back up, and the administration has said it will consider amendments. The two things to watch are whether the council attaches a price floor or a reappraisal trigger to any future vote, and whether Horhn produces a competitive solicitation for the tract. Both would be visible on a future council agenda at jacksonms.gov.

The larger clock runs through the Legislature. Bell's bill would have to clear the House and Senate in the 2027 regular session, which convenes in January, and the option as written runs to October 31, 2027, with extensions available to 2031. If no gaming bill passes, the city still holds 93 acres of floodplain it has owned for more than 40 years, and LeFleur is out $1,000.

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