A revitalization plan focused on bolstering the Broadway Drive and West Pine Street corridors into safe, attractive, and sustainable areas through community engagement, urban design, and mobility improvements.
Asakura Robinson engaged residents and stakeholders with tactile, interactive visioning activities and worked with City staff to organize “A Night Off Broadway” – a site activation that demonstrated the corridor’s potential and tested future projects using tactical urbanism methods.
Activating the corridors required addressing vacant auto-oriented buildings such as dealerships and garages. A strong entrepreneurial ecosystem led by anchor institutions and local makers provides an opportunity to reuse these spaces for artisans and small-scale makers.
The implementation strategy includes a series of catalytic initiatives to capture community enthusiasm and build momentum. In addition to land use updates, quick-build and phased mobility projects will provide visible investment in the area.
Right Down Broadway outlines a long-term vision for transforming Hattiesburg’s Automotive Row into Hattiesburg’s Creators Corridor. The Broadway Drive and West Pine Street corridors represent opportunities for the greater Hattiesburg community to revitalize a key gateway to the city.
For much of their history, these corridors represented midcentury auto-oriented modernity, with motels and drive-thru restaurants supporting travelers, and car dealerships and a shopping mall serving the regional community. The recent movement of dealerships further out of town and a changing retail economy have led to increased vacancies in the corridor.
Despite these struggles, Hattiesburg residents and leaders have continued to champion the corridors, with collaborations between the Leadership Pinebelt program and the Hattiesburg Alliance for Public Art resulting in a mural series as part of “A Brighter Broadway” initiative. Recognizing the need for a comprehensive revitalization plan for the corridors, the City of Hattiesburg selected Asakura Robinson to facilitate a community visioning and design process.
Robust community engagement was central to the plan’s development, with Asakura Robinson designing two community workshops and facilitating stakeholder engagement with a focus group from the corridors’ business community. The initial visioning workshop drew nearly 100 residents and stakeholders to a local coffee shop and roastery located in a former dealership on Broadway Drive, with interactive exercises allowing residents to share their perspectives, identify assets and opportunities, and co-design the corridor.
Building on the success and enthusiasm of the visioning workshop, the project team worked with the City of Hattiesburg to set an ambitious goal for the second engagement event: creating a demonstration project and site activation to help residents envision their ideas. Working on a compressed schedule, Asakura Robinson provided technical assistance to the City of Hattiesburg as City staff collaborated across departments to temporarily transform a city-owned parking lot at a key intersection.
The resulting event, “A Night Off Broadway”, used low-cost materials and resources already on hand to create bike lanes, improved crosswalks and intersections, and spaces for play and gathering. The Hattiesburg High School football team, marching band, and dance team opened the event with a pep rally; Parks and Recreation staff set up pickleball, giant chess, and an outdoor movie (fittingly showing “Cars” in a nod to the corridor’s history); the Hattiesburg Fire Department set up a sprayground with a fire truck; and local food trucks and vendors provided refreshments for visitors. The plan’s engagement materials and presentations were in close proximity to ensure new stakeholders were able to learn about the plan and provide input.
The plan reimagines the corridors as dynamic, pedestrian-friendly spaces that foster economic development and enhance quality of life for residents and visitors. The project team identified key links in the bicycle and pedestrian network to connect neighborhoods across Broadway Drive and developed a phased implementation strategy.
Building on existing assets and buildings, the plan emphasizes adaptive reuse and infill opportunities with coordinated land use and economic development strategies. Much of the study area is 16th Section Land, which is held in trust and leased by local school districts to provide school funding. As a result, businesses and residents may own their buildings and improvements but not the land they sit on.
The combination of low rents, diverse space sizes, and open floor plans make the corridors an ideal location for Hattiesburg’s creative community, including entrepreneurs, makers, and artisans, to scale up their activities. The plan identifies a series of zoning updates, small business incentives and support, and corridor marketing strategies to make the area more attractive as it transitions from “Hattiesburg’s Automotive Row” to “Hattiesburg’s Creators Corridor”.
The final plan provides actionable strategies, including updated development regulations, economic development initiatives, and estimated improvement costs to guide catalytic projects and future development.
