Dear Readers, I have inflicted photographs from west Jackson on you before. Highway US80 was once a major commercial artery with factories, restaurants, hotels, and motels. Today it is rough. Traffic buzzes past empty warehouses and factories. Motels look like dives.
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| Not much discounting any more (30mm ƒ/5.6 lens) |
The former Gipson Discount Foods is an example of the type of abandoned warehouses that you see along 80. It has some elements of post-war moderne decoration, possibly not too bad when new. And the yellow paint was cheerful.
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| Former employee entry to Coca-Cola bottling plant (30mm ƒ/5.6 lens) |
The "Plant" is, I think, the former Coca-Cola bottling factory, originally built in 1949. The complex appears to be unused, but I recently saw a new fence. Possibly it is an attempt to exclude homeless people. According to a 2010 article in
West Jackson:
The plant was a mainstay on Highway 80 for 58 years. Then, in 2007, the company vacated the aging facility and moved into a newer building in the Northwest Jackson Industrial Park near Interstate 220. The bright spot in this story: at least they didn’t leave the city. However they did leave 143,000 square feet of building space to rest vacant and lonely on the west side.
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| Kodak Super-XX film, 180mm Caltar II-N lens, yellow filter |
The 1949 architecture was considered modern in the post-war era. A Tulsa real estate brokerage company
auctioned the site in 2016, but I did not see on their web page who (if anyone) bought it.
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| Jackson Southwest Hotel, 2649 Hwy 80 West, Jackson |
The Jackson Southwest Hotel, possibly a Holiday Inn at one time, sits empty and vandalized on a hilltop just west of Ellis Avenue. According to
WLBT News in October of 2020, a grant will help revitalize it into a residence for seniors. I previously wrote about the
hotel in 2020.
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| Hotel O, Ellis Avenue, Jackson |
The Hotel O is on Ellis Avenue just north of the westbound ramp to Interstate 20. Despite its modern appearance, vagrants have lived in it for several years and have set fires. You can see fire damage on the right side of the building in the photograph above. It is likely that the building will be razed soon, just like the former Best Western Metro Inn, which was once right across the street. The Metro Inn was crunched up in April of 2021, and nothing is left.
Is this really what happens in American cities? Build, maximize the tax benefits, let the property decline as it moves down the food chain, abandon it, and then demolish it at taxpayer expense? What a ghastly waste of resources, earth materials, and energy.
The panoramic photographs are from Kodak Portra 160 film via the amazing Hasselblad XPan camera and its 30mm and 45mm lenses. Click any frame to see details at 2400 pixels wide.
4 comments:
"Rough" seems a bit of understatement. Still, it is an interesting series and commentary on our culture. If the trash was cleaned up, it would not look as bad, but that is probably like saying water is wet.
Suzassippi, you are right about the trash and debris. It is a miserable indictment on our society. You may recall the article on the unused apartments on Raymond Road, which had become a dumping ground for tires and construction debris:
https://worldofdecay.blogspot.com/2022/02/trashed-apartment-raymond-road-jackson.html
Oh, yes, I remember that post!
I found your blog randomly. I am really enjoying your posts. Thank you for doing this.
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