Amory Businesses Owners Expanding, Renovating, With A Vision For The Future

AMORY, MISS. (WCBI) –  Amory’s downtown district is seeing a lot of activity as business owners expand and renovate properties.

Downtown Amory is experiencing a commercial revitalization , all business owners involved are from the area, and they want to see great things happen for the town.

Erin Reeves and her husband Matt opened “The Coffee Pot” in downtown Amory in 2017. One year ago, the husband and wife team opened “Amped Nutrition” across the street.

Both business have flourished and when a bigger space came available in the downtown area, the decision was made to put the Coffee Pot and Amped Nutrition under one roof.

For Erin and her husband, seeing the upswing in commercial development in the downtown district is encouraging.

“Our whole life we’ve seen different things come up in Amory, each year, see different things, but here as I’ve really gotten involved, we have seen so many things grow and especially grow organically and that’s what most excited about, we have learned how to plan an event and implement it and others feed off of it, and that has been extremely successful,” Reeves said.

That is what is happening at “The Gemstone.” The restaurant and bar had its official grand opening this week and serves a changing menu of specialty items, along with live music.

Co owner Chad Houston says response has been overwhelming. Houston says it’s all about having something different, that can attract more people to the area.

“People asked, are you going to serve steak, catfish, there are a lot of places in town that do that well, we wanted to have a menu that was pretty unique and everything on our menu is unique , you can’t get other places and I think the people of Amory are excited about that, and of course it is a bar, first one in Amory,” Houston said.

A  few blocks away, Orin Holley is renovating the historic Park Hotel. It will feature apartments, office space and two restaurants , also, First American National Bank is expanding its space on the ground floor. Holley says business owners are caught up in the momentum and are eager to see each other succeed.

“It’s not here for competition, dog eat dog, there will be times I will be in their establishments, they will be in my establishments, we are all looking as friends to be together and everybody succeed at this,” Holley said.

The Coffee Pot and Amped Nutrition should be in their new space by the end of August.

The Park Hotel could have its main restaurant opened later this year. The apartments should be ready sometime next year