GAUTIER, Miss. (WLOX) – Tuesday night, the Gautier City Council approved the creation of a Tax Increment Finance (TIF) district for the Legacy Park project on Highway 57 despite objections from Jackson County and Singing River Health System.
The park would include shopping, restaurants, apartments, a hotel, and medical offices.
“Majority of it is retail, dining, a hotel, living quarters, and condos,” Gautier Mayor Casey Vaughn said. “A very small component of it is medical, but majority of it is dining and other amenities.”
The medical space would be a Cardiac Ambulatory Surgical Center (ASC).
According to the Jackson County Board of Supervisors, the Cardiac ASC would be connected to a for-profit health system — and could possibly be a competitor for the county-owned Singing River Health System.
A press release from the supervisors and SRHS board said the Cardiac ASC would divert revenue from the county’s community-based hospital, and ultimately have a negative financial impact on SRHS.
Mayor Vaughn says that although there are objections from the county and Singing River Health, the development could still strive with support on all sides.
“This is not going to hurt anybody or lay anybody off,” Vaughn said. “It could be a partnership, but you got to work with the developers like we did.”
With the city of Gautier growing, Mayor Vaughn believes that it can only improve from here.
“We’re centrally located in Jackson County and we’ve had a lot of challenges, but our ship is sailing.”
Jackson County and SRHS have both stressed they are not opposed to the commercial development as a whole, just the cardiac surgery center attached to it.
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