Summer vacationers in shorts and sandals at the Mississippi Welcome Center in Vicksburg will give way to workers sporting safety vests and shovels by mid-September, as stimulus-funded enhancements bring intermittent closures through March.

Public access to the center’s parking lot and restrooms will be severely limited as crepe myrtles, Indian hawthorn shrubs and nandina bushes around the main building will be planted to replace greenery of the same type already in the ground. “New” plants and ground fill will be watered regularly with a timer-controlled irrigation system, according to plans by the Mississippi Department of Transportation. The nature of the task — waiting for seeds to take root — has dictated a time frame from Sept. 9 through March 31 on the contract, expected to be awarded in August.

The notion of pulling up “old” plants and replanting the same variety has already drawn puzzled looks and responses from tourists and locals.

“Everything already looks nice to me,” said Leo Stambaugh of Dallas, who has stopped several times over the years at the center often called the city’s “front door.”

“Where are people going to stop? I think it’s a waste of stimulus money.”

Benches will be added along the center’s riverside back patio so visitors can sit in full view of the photogenic Mississippi River bridges. Magnolia trees on both sides of the building will stay, as will an elm tree shading the Blue Star Memorial Highway marker to the building’s east. Parking alterations involve shortening the length of a curb near the main entrance and an extra space at the guard house. Regardless of the additions, motorists will be without a place to take a break along the Mississippi/Louisiana border because a $1.5 million renovation to the Louisiana Welcome Center at Mound is expected to last through November.

To MDOT officials, it’s just another item on a $354.5 million list of highway enhancements and others under contract and funded by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 — including 11 other rest stops and welcome centers in the state.

“We will be replacing all the plants in all the beds except for the more established ones,” MDOT Central District Engineer Kevin Magee said. “The contract time has been configured to avoid the “summer rush” of visitors from Memorial Day to Labor Day, the center’s busiest time of year. It will also allow us to replace the plants during their dormant time of year, giving us our best opportunity for plant survivability. We are going to work with the contractor to try to minimize the actual closure of the welcome center. In any case, it should be open by March 2011.”

The walkway leading to the river overlook connects to the parking lot and may be subject to closure, judging from plans to close the entire parking lot. Magee couldn’t address the specific issue of pedestrian access from the welcome center to Louisiana Circle and Navy Circle, but theorized the contractor “will barricade just enough to do what we need to do.”

Hearty plants like the crape myrtle and other small shrubs are mainstays of public right-of-way beautification and “do well in the South,” said Mary Nell McMaster of the Green Hills Garden Club. Still, the thought of closing a vital source of information for tourists for six months of landscaping while is a head-scratcher.

“It’s the silliest thing I’ve ever heard,” McMaster said, adding the money spent on the landscaping could be better spent moving the Blue Star marker “to a more prominent location.”

“It’s a grand welcome center. People are coming and going all the time and are interested in the Mississippi River bridges.”

Stimulus-funded parking lot expansions began last fall at rest stops and welcome centers along Interstate 55 in Pike, Copiah, Holmes and Pearl River counties — with all three still closed to traffic until at least . Similarly, the traveling public will have to find other places to take pictures of Vicksburg’s riverfront and use restroom facilities once crews begin turning the flower beds in Vicksburg.

“We do have a beautiful scenic area that people usually like to come and take pictures,” center supervisor Elmerree Bradley said. “But, this time, it’s no access.”

Absent the usual pit stop to tend to children and animals, visitors fresh off the highway could stream into neighboring eateries, hotels and casinos.

Brochures of tourist sites and maps of Vicksburg are available from Vicksburg Convention and Visitors Bureau staff, housed in a pair of buildings at Old Highway 27 and Clay Street. The welcome center’s closure shouldn’t result in a “significant impact” to VCVB’s promotional efforts, VCVB executive director Bill Seratt said. Materials for tourists also are offered at Ameristar Casino, which stands to absorb some traffic from trucks and RVs into its parking lot and garage. The casino plans to provide a “friendly, clean and convenient first welcome to Vicksburg for eastbound travelers on Interstate 20,” said public relations manager Bess Averett.

The welcome center routinely ranks second-most visited locale in Vicksburg, of a handful of sites that report the statistics to the VCVB. About 6,000 fewer people visited the center from January through June compared to the same period in 2009, but the facility routinely has 50,000 or more people stop by during the summer months.

“This is our snowbird season, with seniors coming and looking at the river,” Bradley said.

MDOT owns the buildings housing the state’s 14 welcome centers, but the Mississippi Development Authority’s Division of Tourism operates them and employs people to distribute information on area tourist attractions. Vicksburg’s welcome center opened in 1980 and was last renovated in 2005 to upgrade fixtures in the restrooms, replace cabinets and retouch paint in select spots — a task that about 10 months. A decision on where the Vicksburg facility’s 10 employees will be housed while work continues is expected within weeks, MDA tourism spokesman Jennifer Spann said.