John Lynch and Bank of Brookhaven recently joined forces to create an eye-catching addition to the downtown area.

A new mural that promotes Brookhaven and asks visitors to “Come Stay Awhile” now graces what was a large, blank wall at the corner of S. Jackson and W. Cherokee streets.

“I’ve owned that building for a number of years, and it’s a big, blank wall. I’ve seen murals in other cities,” Lynch said, “and I thought it made perfect sense to put something here in Brookhaven. The mural is all about making others aware of the gem we have in our historic downtown.”

Bank of Brookhaven sponsored the mural.

“We try to be a good corporate citizen. We think of it as our duty to think of things to promote our town,” Bank of Brookhaven President Shannon Aker said.

Dr. Kim Sessums was approached to handle the design of the mural.

“We played around with different phrasing. We didn’t want to use ‘Home Seeker’s Paradise’ since that’s been used a lot,” Sessums said. “The first thing we decided was we wanted a little bit of flavor of the old idea of people advertising on a brick wall. We wanted something that had a nice three-dimensional sort of feel … without actually building that up with an applied sign.

After the design was completed, the team handed their work over to McComb painter Saul Maurer.

The process of getting a design from a piece of paper to a final painting that is, according to Maurer, about 18 feet by 30 feet, involves precise scaling.

“For instance, 1 inch on the logo design I had might well have equaled 24 inches on the wall,” he said. “So I make a simple grid of chalk, snapped a few lines, and because I have lettering experience, I’m able to hand render those letters in chalk.

“I loved it. It was a lot of fun, I thought,” Maurer said.