The door to implementing an urban renewal plan city officials hope will eventually transform the Kuhn Hospital property into a multipurpose residential/commercial area is now open.

The Board of Mayor and Aldermen Monday approved a resolution adopting and authorizing the plan to first demolish the buildings on the property and clear it, then begin the process of finding a developer or nonprofit agency to develop it.

“The first step in this is we have to is get the property appraised and then acquire it,” Community Development Director Victor Gray-Lewis said. “Once we acquire it, we can move forward.”

Acquiring the 12.8-acre property at 1422 Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard is essential if the city is to get a low-interest $250,000 state Brownfields CAP loan from the Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality to begin taking the three buildings on the site down.

Under state law, the city must have the property appraised by a certified land appraiser before it can take action to acquire it either through an offer to the four parties that hold an interest in the site, or by eminent domain, a legal process that allows the city to take private property and convert it to public use.

According to records with the Warren County Tax Assessor’s Office, the 12.8-acre property is valued at $64,000.

“The Urban Renewal laws allow us to take the land by eminent domain, but I’m hoping we won’t have to do that,” Gray-Lewis said. “I hope the entities with an interest in the property will accept the appraiser’s value. Either way, we have to own the property before we can apply for the (CAP) loan.”

City officials estimate the cost of razing the three buildings on the property at $850,000.

The board in February accepted the 33-page urban renewal plan for Kuhn that outlines the city’s reasons for the finding, describing the property’s and the buildings’ conditions with photographs, and presents a plan to acquire the property and improve it, and develop it with a mixed residential/commercial and recreational area.

The city’s Planning Commission in March approved the plan, ruling it confirmed with the city’s comprehensive plan, and sent it back to the board for final action.

An artist’s rendering of the proposed development accompanying the urban renewal plan envisions a community with indoor and outdoor recreation facilities including tennis and racquetball courts and gymnasium, and a residential area of single-family homes, townhouses and homes for senior citizens.

A former city hospital, the city sold Kuhn to the State of Mississippi in 1956 for $5, and the state operated the facility as a charity hospital, initially known as the Vicksburg Charity Hospital, until 1989, when Gov. Ray Mabus closed the state’s charity hospitals.

The city regained the property in 1990 under an agreement with the state to turn it over to a private corporation.

In 1993, the building was considered as a possible veterans home, and in 1994, it was considered for a possible 38-bed adolescent psychiatric ward.

In 1999, the building was sold to the Lassiter-Studdard Group Inc., which planned to open a 100-bed clinic and assisted living center.

The plans fell through, and in 2000 the company donated the building to the Esther Stewart Buford Foundation.

The property has been sold four times for taxes, and city officials have been trying for at least the past 10 years to get the property owner to clean the property and demolish or renovate the buildings on the site. The board on July 6 put the 12.5-acre property under the city’s slum clearance ordinance in a move to step up its efforts to remove the complex’s main building.

 

in the aftermath of the abduction and murder of Sharen Wilson, whose body was found on the property June 28.

Police said Wilson was killed in the back building and her body left on the property, where ghost hunters who were on the property found it.

When the parties with an interest in the property failed to present plans to either raze or renovate the two buildings on the site in September, it cleared the way to begin the process for their demolition.