Ridgeland Tourism Commission President and CEO Chris Chapman was ready for a change. She began scouting for a new visitor center location in early 2022, and she kept finding herself back at the Renaissance at Colony Park. Walking back and forth down the strip, she honed in on a space between Barnes & Noble and an AT&T store.
Two years ago, she toured the empty space, which was a former mattress store. Through her tour, she began envisioning the visitor center in that location. The space had everything she and her team needed. When she got home, she began drawing plans for the layout. Offices here, lighting there, a front desk in the lobby with actual visibility to the person behind it—all the elements that the visitors center at the time lacked.
“The old center … was a rectangle. The boardroom was on one side. All of the art was on another side, and then the desk was all the way at the very end. The desk was high, so the person sitting behind it, you could (only) see the top of their head,” Chapman described to the Mississippi Free Press.
The new Ridgeland Visitors Center is located inside the Renaissance at Colony Park, closer to Interstate 55. Photo by Aliyah Veal
The old center was located in the back of the Renaissance, invisible to any cars or visitors shopping in the center. The new Ridgeland Visitors Center is located off Interstate 55 and features a new look. The official grand opening of the visitors center kicked off with a ribbon cutting ceremony on Friday, Feb. 16.
“We felt if we could have visibility … we would have a better opportunity to be able to actually meet a visitor, to greet a visitor and get them into our building,” Chapman said at an invite-only press conference on Feb. 15.
Interior designer Lori Driver sat down with the team, heard their concerns and funneled that into the new visitors center in the Renaissance. The space incorporates all the elements that reflect the city of Ridgeland: nature, biking, blue skies, greenery and
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