In 2024, the Mississippi Center for Cultural Production (Sipp Culture) will open the Main Street Cultural Center on Main Street in downtown Utica, Mississippi. The opening of this newly imagined and renovated space marks a new beginning for the small rural town of Utica. This space, which occupies the corner lot in downtown Utica at the intersection of White Oak Street and Main Street, hasn’t been a viable business for more than two decades. Through this renovation project, this space will now provide a state-of-the-art commercial kitchen and an intimate venue for the presentation of music, film, and multidisciplinary performance and visual art. It will serve as Sipp Culture’s primary presenting venue for year round arts programming.

Sipp Culture has been working with Mike Grote of Alembic Community Development of New Orleans as the primary developer consultant in support of this project. Mike is the visionary behind the Andre Cailloux Center for Performing Arts & Cultural Justice (ACC) on historic Bayou Road and the conversion of former elementary school, McDonough 19, into the TEP Center in the Lower 9th Ward, both in New Orleans. Mike has walked us through the process of developing this underused space into a concept for long-term community health for the town of Utica.

The building is being designed by Allison Anderson, FAIA and John Anderson AIA LEED-AP of unAbridged Architecture in Bay St. Louis. unAbridged designed the Mockingbird Café and The Arts, both in Bay St. Louis. As designers, their goals are to design a space with aesthetic appeal, quality build, and relevance to the community it will serve. As designers, they are also deeply committed to designing for the future and addressing pressing issues of climate change. John was the first LEED-Accredited Professional in the state of Louisiana in 2002.

The Main Street Cultural Center will install a 26 kw solar power grid on the roof of our building. This array will serve three functions: to decrease our annual operational costs; to provide an emergency space for our community during severe weather (disaster preparedness); and to demonstrate how renewable energy can directly impact small rural communities through providing practical applications.