JACKSON, Miss. ( WJTV ) – Thalia Mara Hall is a hot topic in the City of Jackson after the facility was temporarily closed due to “early microbial activity.”

Mike Williams, deputy director of Cultural Services, said the city has been working on an HVAC replacement for Thalia Mara Hall for quite sometime. WJTV 12 News asked Jackson Mayor Chokwe A. Lumumba about the system after the city announced the HVAC controller malfunctioned in the building.

“Now, that air conditioning unit has not been operating at full capacity for some time,” the mayor stated.

“We just had a just an outage. Basically, it was a controls outage, and we got Johnson Controls to come out and assess it,” said Williams.

While the city had the HVAC system checked out, they found another issue.

“During that time, we discovered the microbial growth. And so, we’re working in concert with Johnson Controls to make sure that the proper order operations is is followed,” Williams stated.

“The microbial growth, this isn’t something that has been moving or has been growing for months and months on end,” Lumumba said.

The city wants Thalia Mara Hall to be open in time for Kevin Hart’s tour in September.

“That is our sincere hope and that is the belief of our performance partners. But we, of course, we have to make sure that we’re ensuring the safety of everybody involved and that will be dependent upon the outcomes of our engineer’s reports,” said Williams.

City officials said the event that was supposed to take place at the facility this weekend has been relocated.

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