Part 4: Business, elections and possible execution — the biggest South MS stories of 2025
Buc-ee’s travel center in Harrison County may be the most anticipated new opening in 2025, yet several new businesses are coming across the Coast next year and many of them in downtowns.
OS 1515 on Government Street in Ocean Springs will open in early 2025, with three buildings, 32 hotel rooms, plus condos and new shops, a food hall and upscale restaurant. Just down the street, The Artesian will add more hotel rooms plus a piano bar and an Italian restaurant. Around the block, The Traveler exhibit space and restaurant opens at Walter Anderson Museum of Art and a few blocks away, The Pullman House will host groups and family reunions.
Downtown Biloxi will see residents move into the historic Barq Building on Howard Avenue in downtown, while in east Biloxi, Hammered Harry’s entertainment venue is expected to open. Hundreds of new hotels soon will be under construction and more new restaurants are on the way in 2025, led by the expansion of the White House Hotel and a new Chick-fil-A in west Biloxi.
This year saw a big boom in business in downtown Gulfport and coming in 2025 is Robert St. John’s The Downtowner restaurant, which could open in time for Cruisin’ The Coast in October. Crews continue to restore the Markham Hotel and Amtrak train service is expected to bring new visitors to town.
Waveland and Gautier are working to rebuild or create town centers, while Pascagoula, Pass Christian and Bay St. Louis are getting more downtown housing and seeing other new business follow.
Moss Point continues to focus on its riverfront as it plans to take advantage of its I-10 frontage for a new business corridor. D’Iberville is creating a working waterfront and Diamondhead also is making the most of its waterfront for business development. Long Beach works toward getting a casino, and three casinos are going through site approval and financing stages in hopes of opening in Biloxi.
The Coast has plenty of retail space available, after national stores and restaurants closed in 2023. Winn-Dixie stores in D’Iberville, Gulfport and Long Beach are being converted into ALDI markets in smaller footprints, leaving space to fill.
Four Big Lots stores in South Mississippi will be empty after the company recently went out of business, along with Party City in Gulfport and nine Dirt Cheap and Treasure Hunt stores. Also needing new tenants after they closed in 2023 are Red Lobster at The Promenade in D’Iberville, TGIFridays in Gulfport, Krispy Kreme in Ocean Springs and Lucy’s and Kinkjaks on beach in Biloxi.
Local elections
In 2025, Mississippi Coast residents will elect mayors and ward representatives for their city councils or boards of aldermen, with candidates already announced in a number of cities and races.
Incumbent mayors in two Coast cities — Billy Hewes in Gulfport and George Bass in Long Beach — have announced they will not seek re-election, potentially opening those races for a bigger than usual field of candidates.
In Gulfport, attorney Hugh Keating and former state Rep. Sonya Williams-Barnes have announced that they intend to run.
In the Coast’s nine other cities holding elections, incumbents have announced they intend to run again. Some of those incumbents, including Ocean Springs Mayor Kenny Holloway and Bay St. Louis Mayor Mike Favre, will be challenged by members of their city’s governing boards.
The city of Waveland, formed under a special charter, is on a different election schedule.
Key election dates are list here:
Jan. 2-31: Window to file qualifying papers to run for municipal office.
March 3: Voter registration deadline for municipal primaries.
April 1: Party primaries.
May 5: Voter registration deadline for general elections.
June 3: Genereal election for municipal offices.
July 1: New terms begin for municipal offices.
Jordan execution
Mississippi’s oldest and longest serving death row prisoner, Richard Jordan, is trying again to challenge his sentence, this time arguing that it is invalid because the death penalty was not constitutional at the time of the murder.
“All in all, the fact remains that the only constitutional sentence for any classification of ‘murder’ at the time of Jordan’s offense was imprisonment for life in the state penitentiary,” his attorneys wrote in a Nov. 14 petition for post-conviction relief. “Jordan’s death sentence should thus be vacated.”
His post-conviction petition is the fifth in the past two decades, which have each raised issues during his multiple trials and sentencing and the state’s lethal injection protocol for executions.
The Mississippi Supreme Court will decide whether to grant the relief or deny the relief like it has in other post-conviction appeals.
Meanwhile, the Attorney General’s Office has argued that Jordan is out of legal options and the time has come to set an execution date. Recent calls came in October when the court denied Jordan’s previous petition, and in November when it filed a motion to dismiss the current one.
Regardless, Jordan’s attorneys argue he has not exhausted his federal and state options. The state previously asked for Jordan’s execution date to be set in 2015, but the Supreme Court did not act.
Stories of 2025
Part 1: Buc-ee’s, potholes and our waterways
Part 2: Amtrak, NIL and Katrina
Part 3: Casinos, the seawall and Benjamin Taylor
Today: Our changing downtowns, elections and an execution
