Special Section: Tunica
New year, new Tunica County
Key facility openings signify the Delta-county’s continued success

BY BRAD RILES
DBJ Contributing Writer

Reborn and reinvented, Tunica County continues to make strides as one of the hottest tourist locations in the southeast.

Over the last 12 months, the Mississippi Delta-county put the finishing touches on several new attractions and facilities.

“In the past year, 2004, we actually opened a lot of the facilities we had under construction,” said Kenneth Murphree, Tunica County Administrator. “We opened our RiverPark in March and we had the grand opening of the Tunica National Golf Course in April.

“For the upcoming year, I hope and believe that some of the casinos themselves are going to make some improvements in their properties in terms of adding new amenities or hotel rooms.”

Tunica can consider itself somewhat of an up-and-coming golf hotbed with the recent addition of Tunica National Golf Course, a 7,210-yard, par 72, championship layout designed by current PGA Tour player and architect Mark McCumber.

“(Tunica National Golf Course), which opened in April, is going to do 30,000 rounds of golf in its first year,” Murphree said. “In Tunica, there will be about 75,000 rounds of golf played this year, counting the other two golf courses.

He added that the other two courses, Cottonwoods at the Grand Casino and River Bend Golf Course, increased their rounds’ played by 16,000 from the previous year.

“We can compete with all those other venues that (golfers) might consider going to,” Murphree said.

The golf course, which is set to host the 2005 Southeastern Conference Women’s Golf Championship in April, is only one aspect of the Tunica National Resort.

The resort also houses a state-of-the-art indoor, tennis facility that includes four Davis Cup Har-Tru clay courts, making it the only one of its kind in the south.

The resort recently lost out to Charleston, S.C., a popular, national tourist location in itself, in an attempt to host qualifying rounds for the 2004 U.S. Davis Cup Tennis Championships. Tunica officials hope the second attempt at earning a bid as hosts for the Davis Cup tournament will prove to be more successful.

One of the hottest items in Tunica this year is the RiverPark along the Mississippi River.

Part of the RiverPark’s amenities includes the nearly one-mile drive upon arriving into the facility.

“When you cross the levee, you get into the pristine, almost natural terrain that has been there since time began,” Murphree said.
Based on life and history along the Mississippi River, the RiverPark has been one of the hot, new locations in Tunica.

Overlooking the Mississippi River from a harbor on the eastern bank, the museum features informative exhibits, two stories of history including an observation deck and aquariums with native aquatic life. The park also includes a 130-acre riverside forest with walking trails.

While the RiverPark includes various exhibits focusing on the Delta, it also houses a 48-foot observation platform climate-controlled museum with closed circuit viewing of wildlife in its natural environment, as well as four large aquariums with native river life.

“The RiverPark is to give people an opportunity to be exposed to the Mississippi River,” Murphree said.

Another aspect of Tunica that is still going, or growing, strong is their ability to become a focal point for conventions, meetings and other large, group events. A lot of this can be attributed to the Tunica Arena and Exposition Center.

“The arena had 46 events last year,” Murphree said. A lot of these events were conventions that lasted up to 10 days, he said.

“They generally bring 2,000-4,000 people per week to Tunica for those events,” he said. “Those are people that probably wouldn’t be coming to here otherwise.”

Good indicators of how far Tunica has come in a relatively short amount of time are the efforts being made to improve transportation methods in and out of the county.

Tunica Airport, which opened in 2003, underwent some enhancements that will help bring bigger and better things to the surrounding area.

“We completed the work on our instrument landing systems and our weather instrument equipment,” which will allow for larger commercial planes, such as 727s, Murphree said.

“The business at the airport is much greater than it was from a year ago,” he said.

Highway 304, which is also under construction and schedule to be completed around Thanksgiving of 2006, also has a big future in Tunica County. The Highway will serve as the southern third of Memphis’ new outer beltway, as well as better connect drivers via Birmingham, and allow for better roadways in and out of the county.

Whether it is the golf course, airport or the RiverPark museum, everything shares a common theme — “tourism.”

“They are all interwoven in terms of trying to build a broader tourist market in Tunica,” Murphree said.

“Ninety percent of the people that come to Tunica are from out of state,” which can be largely attributed to the gaming industry,” Murphree said.

This helps the state because non-Mississippi tourists are spending new money in Tunica, as well as the state, and adds to the overall economy.

How things have changed over time.

“Twelve years ago, Tunica County was a drain on Mississippi,” Murphree said. “It was a drain on the state’s economy, as well as the tax-base. The state had to spend more money to support Tunica County than we were putting back into the state.”

This year, through all its taxes, Tunica County will contribute four to five percent of the entire general fund in the state, he said.

However, Tunica does not want to be labeled as a “one horse town” much longer when it comes to helping Mississippi.

“We don’t want to be an economy that is just dependent on one source,” said Lyn Arnold, executive director, Tunica County Chamber of Commerce, referring to the gaming industry.

“Industry wise, we have a lot of prospect activity,” Arnold said. “We are trying to do some true industry development and we have been very pleased with the number of prospects we’ve had.”

Arnold said she has been working on an industrial park development pretty heavily over the last year in hopes of luring several businesses to Tunica.

“We think we are in a good position for some warehouse distribution,” she said. “A study done a few years ago said (Tunica County) was in good shape for automotive supplies, manufacturers or possibly automotive manufacturing plants.”

Pharmaceutical and food product distribution are also possibilities, Arnold said, and although they have not landed any yet, companies are continuing to look at the Tunica area as locations for their respective business.

Arnold said when she first arrived in Tunica County there was only about 20 acres of industrial zoned property. Over the past few years that number has increased in to nearly 5,000.

In making Tunica a full-economic community, the county has a sense of security and pride in knowing where they are today compared to where they came from.

We want increase the economy “while we have this opportunity of growth and things going on so we don’t ever have to wind up like we were in the past when we were one of the poorest counties,” Arnold said.

“I think everybody is anxious to diversify the economy,” said Brooks Taylor, publisher of The Tunica Times. “You don’t want to put all your eggs in one basket like we did for so many years with the farming and agricultural industry. You want something to fall back on.”

While new industries will definitely create more jobs, Murphree said employment is easy to find, which has not always been the case for Tunica residents.

“Everybody who wants a job can get a job, regardless of skill level or educational attainment,” he said.

Considering where Tunica’s economic standing was almost a decade ago, the improvements are something to boast about.

“Twelve years ago, about the only recognition Tunica ever got was for being one of the most impoverished counties in the U.S.,” Murphree said. “If you measure that poverty by per capita income, we were the lowest.”

As the outward appearance of Tunica underwent improvements, it created a chain-reaction of inner-change within the county.

Not only has the attitude around Tunica changed, “but lives have changed,” Murphree said. “People have income and health benefits.

“It is a much, improved outlook on life,” Murphree said. “There is a sense of hope and opportunity in Tunica now.”

That hope only continues to grow as plans for better housing and living conditions are on the agenda for Tunica officials.

“We’ve had a lot of new dwelling units built in Tunica without much population growth and that is because we have been able to get people into real jobs with real opportunities,” Murphree said. “We’ve got a couple of new opportunities to have residential construction, which is something that has been lacking.”

Plans are in the works for a residential subdivision, Indian Creek, to be developed hopefully within the next month, according to Arnold.

The development, when completed, will contain around 2,000 housing units creating neighborhoods where people want to live, she said.

“Housing is one of the things we are lacking on right now,” said Arnold, but added that there are a lot of things on the horizon.

According to the U.S. Bureau of Census, Tunica County had a population of nearly 23,000 in 1940, compared to its current 10,000, and factored into the overall growth in Mississippi’s population makes it a tough obstacle for any county to recover from.

“Our biggest problem (in housing) is we are competing with DeSoto County,” which is considered part of suburbia-Memphis, Murphree said.

Murphree said stability is the key ingredient in convincing homeowners to choose Tunica County as their place of residence and that it takes time to build up that reputation, however Tunica is well on their way in turning that corner.

“It just takes a while for people to matriculate back to the area,” Arnold added.

The town of Tunica, with its “flourishing downtown area,” has also made strides as a growing community, evidence of their increased sales tax, Arnold said.

“It is a little bit of a paradox situation because we had so much glitz and glamour in the northern part of the county and yet right there in the town its still a lot like Mayberry,” she said.

One of the more popular events of the year, the Tunica Rivergate Festival, will give outsiders the chance to see how much the area has changed. Held in historic downtown April 1-3, the festival features a barbecue-cooking contest, as well as live entertainment and carnival rides. DBJ