County wants to buy vacant mall for $1.25 million
Published 3:43 pm Wednesday, June 19, 2019
A Mississippi county seeks to buy a shuttered mall, as it considers sites for a courthouse.
Lauderdale County Supervisors want to buy the vacant Village Fair Mall for $1.25 million by the end of June.
The county’s historic courthouse is in poor condition, and supervisors in recent months have considered shifting operations to Meridian’s federal building. A post office operates there, while a federal courthouse there closed.
Supervisor Jonathan Wells tells The Meridian Star that paying $1.25 million for the mall’s 39 acres (16 hectares) was a deal “we couldn’t turn down.” He says government buildings could be built there some day.
A former auto maintenance facility at the mall had been polluting groundwater, but Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality documents show storage tank leaks have been partially cleaned up.