Fisher Ferry.
To many residents and public officials in the city, those two words mean more than the name of a road that runs through Vicksburg’s city limits and Warren County.
It’s the name of a piece of property located just inside the city limits and adjacent to St. Michael’s Catholic Church that city officials bought in 2003 for $325,000 as the site of a proposed multipurpose sports complex called Champion Hill in the project files at the City Clerk’s office — a project that was abandoned after city officials spent $2.7 million on planning, permits and site preparation.
But as the city’s ad hoc committee on recreation continues its examination of the city’s recreation programs and facilities and aggressively pushes for a multipurpose recreation complex for Vicksburg, Fisher Ferry is again being discussed as a possible site for a complex.
Monday, the Board of Mayor and Aldermen are expected to approve a contract not to exceed $28,700 with Stantec Consulting Services of Jackson to determine the feasibility of building one of two access roads from the property, to U.S. 61 South, or to Dana Road.
“I think it is incumbent on this administration to show the public that it is economically feasible or not feasible to put a sports complex on a piece of property that the taxpayers are still paying for,” Mayor George Flaggs Jr. said.
South Ward Alderman Willis Thompson agreed.
“I think we need to have it evaluated,” he said. “I feel the best use for it should be for some type of recreation value, whether we have a sports complex or for walking trails, bike trails or playgrounds. We’ve tried to sell it and get ERDC interested in it. We need to see if it is feasible for a sport complex.
“We need to see if we can connect it to Highway 61, that’s a four-lane highway,” he said. “We own the property, we need to see what we can do with it. It has some recreational value, and we need to use it.”
As the Dec. 31 deadline nears for the city’s ad hoc recreation committee to present its report on the city’s recreation programs and facilities, the 200-acre site could figure prominently into future plans.

“I wouldn’t be surprised, based on what the (ad hoc recreation) committee brings to us, that there might not be some other sites that can be used as an option,” Flaggs said, “but I am not convinced yet of all the reasons I’ve heard prior to me coming here why we shouldn’t look at it (Fisher Ferry) as a site. In my opinion, we are protecting the investment of the taxpayer first.”

Since its purchase in 2003, the Fisher Ferry property has been plagued by problems that eventually led to the previous Board of Mayor and Aldermen writing it off as a potential site. Site work begin in January 2009 only to be slowed and halted by delays for wetlands permits, redeveloping plans to avoid wetlands areas along Hatcher Bayou, which runs along the property’s northern boundary and has a history of flooding.
The wetlands problems, coupled with access to the property and the diversion in 2009 of money from a 2007 bond issue from the park to the Washington Street bridge project, eventually forced city officials to end the project.
It is the property’s past, especially its potential problems and the prospect of spending more city money on it that makes North Ward Alderman Michael Mayfield, who was on the board when the construction problems with the site occurred, cautious about Fisher Ferry.
While he will support the feasibility study, Mayfield is not so sure the property is the right place for a sports complex.
“I’ve been dealing with this property for a long time,” he said. “It has a lot of problems being in a flood zone and with ingress and egress. That property (entrance) is located in a curve on Fisher Ferry. Hatcher Bayou is right there, and that area is affected by flash flooding and backwater flooding.”
The western sections of Hamilton Heights Subdivision, which is adjacent to Hatcher Bayou is prone to flooding in heavy rains and was the site in the 1990s of several Federal Emergency Management Agency flood buyout programs.
Mayfield said city officials have preciously examined building a road to U.S. 61, adding, “it will cost a lot of money, and we need to be sure of what’s going to be involved before we plan to spend a lot of money.”
He agrees with Thompson that the property has value as a recreational area.
“If there’s something we can put in there without spending a whole lot of money, I’m all for it,” he said. “But I don’t believe that with the problems it has it is a good site for a large complex like they’re talking about.”