The Madison County Board of Supervisors voted 3-2 on Tuesday to issue $48 million in urban renewal revenue bonds for a 50,000-square-foot conference center in Ridgeland, ending a two-hour meeting that turned on how much the county should trust the developer who brought Topgolf to Mississippi. Board President Gerald Steen joined Supervisors Karl Banks and Paul Griffin in the majority. Trey Baxter and Casey Brannon voted no.

The centerpiece of the dispute was not the building itself but the terms of the land deal. The county plans to buy 13 acres near Topgolf from PraCon MS Fund LLC for roughly $795,000 an acre, and the financing documents included a clause letting the developer acquire the finished conference center for $10 once the bonds are repaid, according to WLBT's account of the meeting.

Baxter tried four times to tighten the deal. He asked for an updated independent appraisal before bond money bought the land. He asked to strip the automatic $10 conveyance and require future board approval before any sale to PraCon. He asked to postpone the land purchase until the developer's private hotel financing was secured. Each motion failed on a 2-3 vote, with Baxter and Brannon on one side and the majority on the other.

When Steen moved past the amendments to a substitute motion approving the financing outright, Baxter pushed back. 'You're not recognizing the board member's motion?' he asked. 'Are you a dictator? Are you Kim Jong-Un?' Steen answered that the bond is a way to build the center without raising taxes.

The county will own the conference center. The adjoining 250-room hotel, announced Tuesday as a Dolce by Wyndham at a reported $67 million, will be privately developed and financed by PraCon Global Investment Group, the company run by Gabriel Prado. PraCon also stands to collect 5 percent of the conference center's gross revenue each year under the management arrangement, with Dolce by Wyndham running the venue.

Prado told the board he is not walking away empty-handed from the public side of the deal, either. He said roughly $18 million in sales tax rebates flowing back to developers from the earlier Topgolf project are being used to cover the conference center's bond debt. WLBT said it was seeking details of that agreement from the city of Ridgeland.

The financing math is the part worth watching. The bonds are to be repaid over 20 years from the project's net operating revenue, with a special fund set aside to cover payments if revenue falls short. Baxter argued the taxpayers should keep a fair economic interest in the property if it is ever resold at below-market value. The majority's answer was that the county needs the venue more than it needs the hedge.

The vote is the latest chapter in a two-decade push for a conference center in Madison County, and it lands at a moment when the county's growth story is being written by data centers. Amazon has committed roughly $21 billion to campuses in Ridgeland and Canton, and the Clarion Ledger reported that Wyndham pitched its new Dolce brand to Ridgeland specifically because of the proximity of that construction. The conference center and hotel are, in part, hospitality infrastructure for the data center economy.

That is the contrast with Jackson, twenty minutes south. The capital city passed Mississippi's first data center moratorium in July, a 183-day pause while it drafts a governing ordinance, and its council is still fighting over a budget that cuts Public Works by $8 million. Madison County, by contrast, voted to borrow $48 million on the strength of the same boom Jackson has chosen to slow down.

The two supervisors who voted no were not available for comment after the meeting, according to the Clarion Ledger. Steen told the paper there had been ample opportunity to ask questions over the months the project moved through the county's urban renewal process. 'This is a good day for everyone involved,' he said.

The real test of that claim will come later, when the revenue projections meet the special fund set aside for shortfalls, and when the $10 conveyance clause is either exercised or quietly retired. Madison County has bet that the data center corridor will fill the building. The county will find out over the next 20 years whether the bet was priced correctly.