Tree Urban Design Studio

05/22/2026

This week, we joined The Redeemer’s School alongside Redeemer Community Development, Redeemer Church, students and families, elected officials, donors, project partners, and community stakeholders to officially break ground at the former Chastain Middle School campus in the Broadmoor neighborhood of Jackson, Mississippi.

The event marked a major milestone in the ongoing transformation of the property through phased reinvestment, collaborative planning, and public engagement efforts that began earlier this year.

The project aims to adaptively reuse the vacant 22-acre public school campus into a new destination for learning, creative arts, recreation, and community reinvestment. The campus will become home to The Redeemer’s School alongside an arts and community hub featuring an auditorium, creative classrooms, library space, and other opportunities for entrepreneurship and workforce training.

The exterior of the site is envisioned as a public park and community landscape with a large trail system, play spaces, outdoor gathering plazas, event lawns, and native Jackson prairie gardens.

Long time residents, business owners, local leaders, and students were invited into the project’s onsite Strategy Studio to review concepts and help shape the vision through ongoing community input and strategic planning efforts led by Redeemer Community Development, M|B|P Make Big Plans, and TREE Urban Design Studio.

TREE is grateful to Redeemer Community Development for dreaming big and investing in the future of Broadmoor.

05/13/2026

Last year, TREE and Josh McManus at M|B|P / Make Big Plans helped coordinate Jackson Rising, a 90-day citywide civic engagement and strategic planning initiative created in response to a new city administration taking office addressing the severe challenges of population decline, disinvestment, and fragmented civic coordination impacting Jackson, Mississippi.

The process brought together more than 300 nonprofit, business, community, philanthropic, and public sector leaders through more than 30 workshops organized around 14 focus areas. Together, participants generated more than 400 ideas and contributed over 1,000 hours of collective work toward a quick action plan for public-private partnership.

At its core, Jackson Rising is a simple idea: people working together to solve problems together. The initiative helped develop the Jackson Rising Framework Plan: A Civic Method for Leaders, Investment, and Action in Jackson, Mississippi. The plan captured priority ideas across 14 focus areas, including retaining and growing population in a shrinking city, improving public safety, fixing infrastructure, eliminating blight, growing the economy, strengthening public spaces, and advancing other shared priorities for the city’s future.

In addition to co-leading workshops, the work included extensive research and cartographic analysis, compiling previously developed plans and partner database, and building out a public storefront on Capitol Street to support engagement, coordination, and visibility.

Jackson Rising was supported by the Community Foundation for Mississippi, W.K. Kellogg Foundation, the City of Jackson, Ray & Nancy Neilsen, Great City Mississippi Foundation, Trustmark Bank, and more than 10 additional local businesses and organizations. To learn more about Jackson Rising, follow and visit jxnrising.com.

05/08/2026

This past week our team began work in Stone County, Missouri, visiting communities to study and document existing gathering spaces, parks, trails, landscape conditions, infrastructure, and development patterns.

Located in the Ozark region near the center of the United States, Stone County is defined by an incredible landscape, rich history, and local culture shaped by recreation, tourism, and rural community traditions.

We look forward to the opportunity to listen, learn, and explore how parks, trails, and community gathering spaces can be strengthened and supported for the county’s future.

02/26/2026

The Pearl River Flood Control Project is moving forward, marking an important step toward integrated flood protection, public access, and ecological restoration along the Pearl River.

We are encouraged by this outcome after advocating alongside community partners, the Rankin Hinds Flood Control District, and the Pearl River Revitalization Coalition. Throughout the process, we supported an approach that pairs flood risk reduction with green infrastructure, native wetland systems, and a connected network of parks, trails, and riverfront public spaces.

The approved plan allows for new access points to the Pearl River, restores floodplain function, and establishes the foundation for a future Riverfront District in Downtown Jackson that reconnects the urban core to the river while improving resilience to flood events. As the project advances, this work creates an opportunity to reconnect Jackson and surrounding communities to the Pearl River through public access and a more resilient riverfront that supports both people and the environment.

02/26/2026

02/26/2026

01/23/2026

The public input period is closing for the ONELINE corridor development study.

The ONELINE corridor follows the city’s central north–south spine connecting Downtown Jackson, Farish Street, Midtown, Belhaven, Fondren, and surrounding neighborhoods. This study is focused on identifying the action steps needed to improve infrastructure and advance residential and commercial development opportunities that prioritize walkability, transit, well-designed public space, and stronger neighborhood connections.

Community input is essential to shaping these recommendations. Feedback gathered through this process will directly inform design priorities and next steps. Follow the link to take the survey and help shape the future of mobility in Jackson.

surveymonkey.com/r/ONELINEJXN

01/15/2026

Thank you to everyone who joined us for the ONELINE Corridor Development Study open house! If you missed the event, you still have time to share your thoughts on the draft street and development ideas we shared!

Take the online survey now at onelinejxn.com/survey to check out the concepts and tell us what you think. The survey will be open through mid-January.

01/13/2026

01/03/2026

Construction is expected to begin this year on a new segment of the Museum Trail that will extend it from the Mississippi Farmers Market on High Street to Hal & Mal’s on Commerce Street.