[12/24/03]A gift for the children of Vicksburg will be a new downtown green space that will include a steamboat park, splash park and interactive river displays.

The Vicksburg Board of Mayor and Aldermen was expected to approve advertising today for the $2.3 million project, Mayor Laurence Leyens said Tuesday. Sealed bids will be accepted until Jan. 23 and opened three days later.

Work in the area between Grove and Clay streets along Levee Street is expected to be finished by July.

“I am extremely excited about this new addition to downtown,” Leyens said. “It will make a wonderful gift to our children and their imaginations for years to come.”

Anchoring the project will be a steamboat playground with interactive displays showing the history of river transportation, a pilot house, bells and other steamboat-related features. Other improvements there will be a public bathroom, benches and landscaping.

“(We’ll) take an old blighted area that’s not conducive to too much building and turn it into an area that people can use,” said South Ward Alderman Sid Beauman.

That area today is across railroad tracks from the City Front murals and is largely vacant except for the former McGuffie Steel building and the remnants of the sternwheeler Sprague. The parts from the Sprague are all that remain of the record-setting towboat that burned at its moorings on April 15, 1974. They will be incorporated into the park.

Plans for downtown near the park also include a railroad museum at the former Levee Street Depot, which the city has already purchased from a private owner, and an amphitheater between Washington and Levee streets. The depot restoration is expected to begin by the end of the year, but plans for the amphitheater are on hold because of a pending eminent domain case over property at Jackson and Levee streets.

The park project will be funded from the $17.5 million bond issue the administration authorized in November 2001. In September, the city wrapped up a $2.6 million reconstruction of downtown Washington Street, and the $5.6 million urban renewal project is ongoing.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers also has plans to build a river museum to the north of the Levee Street Depot, and there are discussions of making the MV Mississippi part of the display. The Mississippi was the Corps flagship on the river until being retired and replaced in the 1990s. It has been docked in the Vicksburg harbor since the city accepted title to the vessel about seven years ago.

Much of Vicksburg’s history is centered on the area to be redeveloped. Although the Yazoo Canal has been the manmade body of water flowing past for 100 years, the Mississippi River, before changing course, brought packet boats to the city, and they tied up nearby. City Front was a bustling center of warehouses and river and rail commerce in those days.