TYLERTOWN — Aldermen moved forward March 1 on facilitating the development of a skilled nursing facility on the site of former recreation fields in the southern part of town.
The town board amended Tylertown’s zoning ordinances to add and define skilled nursing facility as a facility “where persons are housed and cared for, furnished meal and continuous skilled nursing care, but not a hospital” as defined elsewhere in the ordinances.
The board also amended the ordinances to allow skilled nursing facilities in any residential zone in town.
The amended ordinances take effect in April.
The changes will allow Cognos Consulting, the parent company of Billdora Senior Care in Tylertown and four other facilities in central and southern Mississippi, to build an additional facility in Tylertown.
The company and town officials reached an agreement that was approved in February to sell a town-owned block of land bounded by Maryland, Louisiana, Jackson and Laurel streets.
Recreational fields on that block have been disused in recent years, as youth baseball leagues have moved to fields at Holmes Water Park.
Board members also officially closed and abandoned a street that was never built,
A “Jackson Street” was plotted to run north and south through the middle of the block sold to Cognos Consulting, but was never opened or used. The existing Jackson Street, bounding the block a few yards to the west, is not affected by the closure of the other, nonexistent Jackson Street.
The zoning amendments and road closure remove any obstacles the town might have had to the development of the new nursing facility.
