42 Years Later, the Doors on Magnolia Drive Got Replaced
A facade grant from Mississippi Power Foundation and the Stone County Economic Development Partnership helped Tim and Debra Purvis finish a renovation they'd been putting off for decades.
PHOTO: Stone County Economic Development Partnership and Mississippi Power Foundation representatives present a $5,000 facade grant check to Pac-N-Ship owners Tim and Debra Purvis outside the business at 234 Magnolia Drive North in Wiggins on Aug. 18, 2026. (Photo courtesy of the Stone County Economic Development Partnership)
The doors on the Pac-N-Ship building at 234 Magnolia Drive North have been open and shut, hard, more times than anyone can count. After 40 years of deliveries, walk-ins, the daily churn of a shipping counter, they finally got replaced.
On Tuesday, August 18, the Stone County Economic Development Partnership (SCEDP) and the Mississippi Power Foundation presented Tim and Debra Purvis with a $5,000 check, the maximum a single business can receive through the two organizations’ facade grant program. The grant helps close out more than $20,000 in renovations for the multi-tenant building they’ve owned since the mid-1980s.
The work included new siding with textured panels and trim, fresh paint on each office suite in its own color, new exterior lighting, repairs to a failing south-side eave, and new double-glass doors at the Pac-N-Ship entrance, replacing originals that had outlasted four decades of daily use.
A building with more than one past life
Before it was Pac-N-Ship, the building was an empty, run-down former gas station when Tim Purvis and his business partner bought it around the time he and Debra married in 1985. They renovated it and had the doors installed at the entrance, the same doors that stood there for the next 41 years.
A local craftsman installed them. “Things were built better back then,” Debra Purvis said. When a door company came out ahead of this summer’s renovation, they found the doors in remarkably good shape for their age, but deteriorating badly enough to leak around the edges and threaten the floor the Purvises had replaced just five years ago. The company laid out two options: repair with no guarantee it would hold, or replace outright, for roughly double the cost. The Purvises chose new doors.
The $5,000 match, Purvis said, “took about a quarter of the cost off. If somebody’s offering to help you get it done, that’s reason enough to do it.” For now, the Purvises say they’re taking a breath…no more big projects planned for a while.
Why the city cares about a coat of paint
Magnolia Drive is one of Wiggins’ main routes in and out of town, and that’s the point of the grant program, according to Mayor Daryl Berry: first impressions. “When people see a building that’s just had work done from that facade grant, it gives a good impression of the city,” he said. “I think it has a great impact, and I think it even draws customers.”
SCEDP Executive Director Layla Essary said the program grew out of a partnership Mississippi Power approached the city with a few years ago, aimed at upgrading storefronts within the company’s footprint in downtown Wiggins. Mississippi Power Foundation and SCEDP have matched close to $85,000 in facade grants to downtown Wiggins businesses to date, with roughly $15,000 more expected to go out in the next few months. “There are at least two more facade projects to announce by the end of 2026,” Essary said.
This round’s funding is fully committed, but SCEDP is applying for additional funding at the start of its new fiscal year. Business owners in Wiggins’ Central Business District who want a shot at the next round can email scedp@stonecounty.com now for an application packet to get in line if new funding becomes available.