"It's a new day in Byhalia," Mayor Don Hollingsworth told a reporter last fall.
He was talking about utilities and paperwork more than anything you'd stop to photograph. But drive past the old Byhalia High School building on Highway 309 this month and you'll see what he meant. Half the windows still have that just-replaced look. There's no elevator yet. Part of the exterior masonry work is still on a punch list somewhere. If you've lived here a while, you probably still think of it the way most of the town does: the old school, still getting fixed up, someday it'll be something.
It already is something. Three town functions are running out of that building right now, before the renovation is finished, and that gap between how the place looks and what it's actually doing is the story worth knowing if you live here.
A building that's been "getting fixed" since before most current renovations started
The town bought the old high school property in the early 2000s and named it the Old School Commons, pairing it with the adjacent Walking Trail as what planners called the hub for the town and Main Street. That was the goal on paper for close to two decades. In practice, the building spent most of that time in patch mode: a new roof here, replaced windows there, restrooms added to the lower level, HVAC finally installed in the auditorium. The state designated it a Mississippi Historic Landmark back on October 12, 2006, which is the kind of designation a building can hold for twenty years while still looking like a project in progress.
The version residents are seeing now traces to a construction contract let in the summer of 2024, with a pre-bid walkthrough at the Commons on July 2 that year and a 270-day contract window covering site work, roof and masonry restoration, interior renovation, and new mechanical and electrical systems. Run that math forward and Phase 1 construction was substantially finished by spring 2025, which lines up with what Hollingsworth described a few months later: every upstairs room, including the auditorium, renovated and ready.
What's actually staffed inside it right now
Here's what moved into a building most people still drive past without a second look:
- Byhalia Main Street's office, now headquartered at the Commons under a full-time director, Rhonda Causie. That's not a volunteer committee meeting once a month. That's a staffed office running the town's downtown revitalization work day to day.
- Parks and Recreation offices, occupying two large rooms renovated specifically for that purpose.
- The Byhalia Area Arts Council, whose director, Susan Bonds, has talked about using the finished auditorium space to start a little theatre program. That part is still an idea more than a schedule, but it's an idea with a finished room already waiting for it.
The town also planned to move its public library into the Commons, targeting occupancy around late October or early November of 2025, into a ground-floor space with the tall ceilings and natural light the old high school's downstairs rooms are known for. Whether that move has fully wrapped by now, the building was already carrying real staff and real square footage before that piece even landed.
The math that says this isn't close to done
None of that means the project is finished, and the town's own paperwork says as much. Recent town hall meeting minutes show the board still approving invoices to architect Belinda Stewart AIA for Old School Commons work, small line items that only make sense if there's active project management still happening on the building. Phase 1, the roughly $2.2 million in grants from the Mississippi Department of Archives and History and the Mississippi Arts Council plus $400,000 in city matching funds, covered the roof, the masonry, the upstairs rooms, and the auditorium. Phase 2, which still needs to happen, is priced at another $2.5 million and centers on one specific, expensive item: an elevator.
| Scope | Funding | Status | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Phase 1 | Roof, masonry, upstairs rooms, auditorium HVAC | ~$2.2M in state grants + $400K city match | Substantially complete by 2025 |
| Phase 2 | Elevator, remaining renovation | ~$2.5M still needed | Not yet funded/complete |
That's the part worth sitting with. A building can be fully staffed on its ground floor and still be, technically, an unfinished construction project upstairs. Byhalia's civic hub is both true at once.
Why this is the year it's picking up speed
The Commons isn't happening in isolation. The town board approved a new 2026 memorandum of understanding to continue Byhalia's status as a Mississippi Main Street community, and the Mississippi Main Street Association recognized Byhalia among the communities it honored at its 2026 statewide awards luncheon. That's the kind of renewal that only happens if the state sees ongoing activity worth continuing to back, not a project that stalled out.
The rest of downtown has been moving with it. The town restored and relit Veteran's Park on Brunswick, where the Byhalia Garden Club installed a Blue Star Memorial, giving the town a permanent space for its Memorial Day, Veterans Day, and July 4 gatherings. Niagara Bottling donated $30,000 specifically to buy trees for downtown, with the Marshall County Master Gardeners Club and the county Extension office helping select and plant them. None of that is required to happen alongside a school renovation. It's happening because the town is treating this stretch of downtown as one connected push, not a single building project.
You can see the same pattern in this year's community programming. The library hosted a Letters to 2076 collection session in late May, part of the town's broader Byhalia250 slate that continued in mid-June with a Liberty & Legacy event tied to the same anniversary programming running nationally this year. Those are the kinds of events that need a functioning building with staff behind them to actually happen. They're proof the Commons is doing civic work in 2026, not just absorbing invoices.
What it means for the block itself
If you haven't walked that stretch of downtown in a while, the food scene around it gives you a reason to. Hometown Kitchen, a breakfast-and-lunch spot on S. College Street inside the historic district, has kept early hours and a loyal following through a menu refresh. Jimbo's Brickhouse Barbeque, Seafood Junction, and Little Moo's round out the short list of places locals mention most often when someone asks where to eat in town. None of them are new. What's new is that there's finally a reason to park downtown for something other than a meal: an office with a director who answers the phone, a park with a name on a memorial, and a building that's staffed even while it's still under a punch list.
Byhalia isn't rebuilding a school. It's quietly finishing the process of turning one into the actual working center of the town, one funded phase at a time, while residents keep driving past assuming it's still someday.
If you're keeping an eye on what's changing in Byhalia, whether you're settled here for good or just curious what a place like this is worth to someone weighing North Mississippi against the Memphis side of the line, Christopher Farm tracks these shifts closely as part of daily work across Marshall and DeSoto counties. Let's Connect if you ever want a straight read on what's actually happening here, not just what the building still looks like from the road.
