- The sixth part of an in-depth analysis of the construction industry in Mississippi profiles the developer of Plein Air in Taylor.
After Campbell McCool and his wife, Leighton, started the extraordinary Plein Air real estate development in the early aughts in Taylor, two big hiccups disrupted the business plan: the stock market crash of 2008 and COVID in 2020.
“The worldwide recession of 2008 to 2009 and Covid of 2020 had very different impacts on us,” said McCool. “The first almost took us out; the second was difficult, but nothing as challenging as the first.”
Before the recession, the McCools had borrowed “a whole lot of money, in addition to putting in a whole lot of our own money,” he said.
To make ends meet, the McCools took second jobs. McCool spent four years as chief marketing officer for SmartSynch, a Jackson-based technology firm specializing in smart grid solutions using cellular networks for communication. Itron (NASDAQ: ITRI), North America’s largest maker of smart meters, bought SmartSynch in 2012.
“Nothing (in real estate) was selling,” he said. “There was nothing you could do about it. But you’ve got to keep making those payments to the bank.”
When the economy came screeching to a halt, many “experts” suggested the McCools lower their price points, “dumb down the project, and aim at a different target,” he said. “We weren’t willing to do that.”
It was 2012 before Plein Air got back on track, and 2014 before McCool returned full time.
“I was very proud of the fact that we never missed a payment,” said McCool. “Our primary lender told us several years later, we were one of the very few of their large developments that made it through that period. But we got through it.”
McCool’s vision for Plein Air, located four miles south of Oxford, had been on his mind since he was a youngster, growing up in a New Orleans neighborhood that had a corner grocery, pub and restaurant, and houses very close together.
Seaside, established by Robert Davis and widely credited as the original Traditional Neighborhood Development (TND) neighborhood, located on the panhandle of Florida, was an inspiration for Plein Air.
“TND neighborhoods have smaller individual yards, a good bit of common green space, an emphasis on walking sidewalks, and a de-emphasis on the car,” said McCool.
McCool discovered Taylor, or more specifically the unique Taylor Grocery store, when he was an Ole Miss student in the 1980s.
“I was the fourth generation of my family to go to Ole Miss,” McCool said. “My great grandfather founded the business school in 1918 and was dean for the next 23 years. My grandfather and William Faulkner were childhood friends and worked at the post office together. My mother was the first Carrier Scholar. So, there wasn’t much discussion in my household about where I would go to college. I never even looked anywhere else.”
McCool earned an English degree.
“Writing came easy for me,” he said. “I learned after college how critical effective communications – written and verbal – are to a successful business venture, and I was good at that. I was drawn into the communications and marketing world.”
In 1992, McCool established McCool Communications, a boutique advertising and marketing firm, in Atlanta with no clients and a $25,000 seed investment.
“I’d never run an advertising agency,” he said. “It was a slow first year or two. But we developed a reputation of delivering for our clients, and we hustled. We outworked competitors for new clients and our reputation grew. We landed a roster of extremely attractive clients and had a good team that stayed together for a long time for that industry. That’s what got the attention of some larger firms and led to us being acquired.”
He met Leighton in Atlanta.
“We met on a job interview,” he said. “We were both in advertising and I tried to hire her (unsuccessfully). Years later, after we were engaged, we came to find out her great-great grandfather and mine both left Ole Miss in the same small troop (Lamar Rifles of the 11th Miss) to march off in the Civil War together.”
While there, McCool served as president of Sales & Marketing Executives of Atlanta, the largest chapter in America.
McCool sold the agency in 2001, just before 9/11, to an international firm with agencies across North America.
In the meantime, the McCools turned their attention to Mississippi. In 1997, the McCools bought a small farm in Taylor. Two years later, they acquired 64 acres nearby.
“We bought it with no particular plan, but thought the way Lafayette County was growing, it would be a good investment,” he said. “We then spent a few years studying the TND movement and thinking about the project.”
In 2002, the McCools moved to Taylor with their three young sons, Davis, Merrick, and Wyatt. McCool joined Ole Miss Chancellor Robert Khayat’s office as executive director of a new program, Blueprint Mississippi, a joint initiative between the private sector and the state’s three largest public universities, to write and implement a program to improve the quality of work and life in the Magnolia State.
Finding higher education slow-paced and regimented, McCool, an entrepreneur by heart, stepped down to start developing real estate.
“The first few projects were in town in Oxford, some townhomes and a few things like that, all the while staring at the 64 acres we’d purchased,” he said. “We decided to go with Plein Air in 2004 to 2005 and stuck a shovel in the ground in 2006.”
To be continued …
Part 7, the second part of a feature on Campbell McCool and Plein Air, in our construction industry impact series, will be published September 25.
