A Multi-Million Dollar Labor of Love

When Biloxi businessman James S. Love, III bought the White House Hotel back in 1989, the venerable Grande Dame that his father once owned and cherished for thirty years had faded into a neglected dowager, an aging beauty who remained vacant as she watched over the Gulf.

But this was one Grand Lady who could still test her suitor's patience. Delayed by an extremely tight lending climate, Love would end up waiting an entire decade - while bearing the property's ongoing burdens of taxes, insurance and maintenance - before he could begin therenovation. Meanwhile, the White House had found a welcomed spotlight from the Mississippi Heritage Trust, who put the circa 1895 resort hotel on the state's very first list of "10 Most Endangered Places."

And when the banking pendulum finally swung favorably back, coupled with a casino boom on the Mississippi Coast, Jim Love felt the time had come to start work on the White House Hotel. In the summer of 1999, ten years after he first rescued the Grand Lady, Love launched an ambitious $23 million dollar restoration and expansion of Biloxi's historic White House Hotel. Alas, it was not to be. Following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, financing for the project fell through. Plans for the restoration would once again have to wait.

On August 29, 2005, Hurricane Katrina swept through the Mississippi Gulf Coast, leaving devastation in its wake. Fortunately, the White House Hotel suffered only minor damage. In an effort to spur redevelopment of the ravaged Gulf Coast, Congress passed several important incentive programs, including the Gulf Opportunity Zone, which increased the Federal Rehabilitation Tax Credit from 20% to 26%, and expanded New Markets Tax Credits areas of eligibility. State officials also adopted new legislation to aid in the recovery, including a state Rehabilitation Tax Credit and a state New Markets Tax Credit.

Plans to utitilize these state and federal incentives to finance the restoration of the White House Hotel as a first class resort are underway.