Rising Spring's First Building Is a Clinic Clinton Already Uses

In late August, the university president stood on the new stage at Rising Spring and talked about the project. WLBT reported that the stage was one of the few places on the site with shade from the afternoon sun. Blake Thompson leads the school that became Mississippi Christian University on June 1, 2026, after many years as Mississippi College. At the time, the stage was still being finished, and the rest of the site was mostly streets, sidewalks and graded dirt.

If you drive Highway 80, you have watched this corner at Springridge Road for a long time. The first business now rising there gives Clinton care it already had, in a new location. Baptist Medical Group is building a medical office that takes over the clinic services now housed in the Baptist HealthPlex on campus and adds some new ones. The pieces that would change where Clinton shops and eats are a grocery store, a national retail center, a hotel and restaurants. In the September reports, none of them had a named operator or a published timeline.

Two Years Below Grade

Rising Spring has been slower to show itself because most of the early money went underground. Crews started clearing the site in 2022, after the state awarded Clinton $8 million for economic development projects. Water, sewer and power lines went in first, then the streets, streetlights and sidewalks on top of them. The Clinton Courier quoted project manager Paul Collins: "Without the stuff underground, which has taken two years, you could not have this stuff above ground."

Laura Jackson is the university's chief operating officer and chief financial officer. She told the Courier that some people complain the project is taking too long, and that the land at Highway 80 and Springridge "was very raw land." Its topography needed extensive dirt work before anything could be built.

The Board of Aldermen is still paying for that groundwork. On August 4, the board approved an $885,919.15 contract with Joe McGee Construction for phase-two sitework and a contract of nearly $202,000 with SchoggenScapes, Inc. for landscaping. It also approved the final plat for the phase-one subdivision and a dimensional variance for Baptist. Even the size of the site varies by account. WLBT called it a 50-acre project, and the Courier put it at 54 acres.

What Is on the Ground Heading Into November

Public reporting from August and September 2026 describes the site this way:

Only three things in the table are finished, and none of them is a business.

The First Business Moves Across Highway 80

Baptist has been in Clinton since 1997. It opened the Baptist HealthPlex on campus that year and added primary care and physical therapy in 1998. The Rising Spring building will be bigger and will add a Baptist Heart satellite clinic for cardiac care. Brad Beattie, chief operating officer for the Baptist Medical Group, described the change to WJTV at the August 26 groundbreaking:

"The big thing is you don't have to go downtown to the main campus to have services. Now, you can see your cardiologist. You can have primary care services, even some imaging right down the street from your house and in Clinton."

Jackson told the Courier that the clinic services now in the HealthPlex will move to the new building and that Baptist will add more services there. She also said Baptist will keep providing medical care to the university's faculty, staff and students. Thompson told WLBT that moving outpatient services and physicians' offices out of the HealthPlex will free that space for the university's health sciences programs.

For Clinton households, the clinic's real change is the cardiology. Primary care and physical therapy are already in town and are moving a short distance across the highway. Heart appointments and some imaging are the services Beattie says will no longer require a trip to Baptist's main campus in Jackson.

The Errands Are Still Unnamed

The parts of Rising Spring that would change weekly routines are still on paper. Thompson told WLBT that the 150,000-square-foot center will hold several national retailers, which "will include things like a grocery store, sporting goods, home furnishing kind of places." He did not name them. He said the Mattiace Company is developing the center. The project's phase-one page adds a planned grocery store, dining, retail, loft residences and a fitness facility. Every one of them is written in the future tense.

Still to come, according to public statements so far:

• A grocery store, with no operator announced
• Sporting goods and home furnishings retailers inside the Mattiace center
• A boutique hotel
• Restaurants and smaller locally owned shops
• Loft housing
• A university art space where Thompson hopes students will display and sell their work

In mid-September, Jackson told the Courier, "I think you will see some additional announcements coming that will be very exciting for the city of Clinton in the next weeks and months." Neither the Courier report nor the project's phase-one page gave an opening timeline for the grocer or the retail anchor.

What the Corner Already Gives Back

The finished pieces are built for gathering. The covered amphitheater stage was the first structure on the site. Rising Spring's September phase-one page describes it as a future community gathering and entertainment venue and lists no scheduled events.

Just south of the stage is the spring the project is named for. WLBT reported that the spring is older than the university. It will be a focal point of the site, and the new water feature reuses many of the bricks that lined it before construction began.

The original plan also ties the site back to campus. When the university announced the project in July 2024, it said McLemore Drive would extend across Highway 80 from campus into Rising Spring. The plan included pedestrian green space around the spring and walking trails inside the development. The plan does not lay out a route to the brick streets of Olde Towne. For now, Clinton's main gathering place is still the one Main Street Clinton fills with its fall calendar.

The next real change at Highway 80 and Springridge Road will be a named grocer, retailer or hotel. In the most recent reporting, the Baptist building was the only business under construction there.

If you own a home near the Highway 80 corridor and want to know how the plans for Rising Spring might affect your property's value, Marketplace Real Estate can walk you through it with local knowledge. Start with a free home valuation, or browse our Clinton neighborhood guide.