The tree-lined bluffs overlooking picturesque river views along Vicksburg’s Oak Street corridor are on city officials’ radars to be fixed up in an urban renewal project designed to raise property values and entice prospective commercial tenants.

&#8220What it’s saying to developers is: ‘We are going to focus on this area in a very intense way,’” Mayor Laurence Leyens said this week of the nascent project, likely to be funded this fall by the city’s second multimillion-dollar bond issue in five years.

The Board of Mayor and Aldermen is expected to approve hiring Jimmy G. Gouras Urban Planning Inc. to create a blueprint for properties in the proposed renewal zone at its next regular meeting Monday. Gouras also put together plans for the recently completed, $18 million downtown renewal project in 2001.

Leyens and other city officials have proposed issuing a $5 million bond at the start of the next fiscal year, beginning Oct. 1, to pay for the project, among others. A $2 million softball and recreational complex has also been mentioned as a potential part of the bond.

&#8220There are no grants to fund a project like this,” said Wayne Mansfield, city planner heading the effort. &#8220More than likely it would be through some bond issuance. Certainly nothing’s been finalized at this point.”

The plan is expected to target properties from Washington Street west to the Mississippi River and Yazoo Diversion Canal between roughly Veto Street to the north – the edge of the previous renewal zone – and North Frontage Road to the south. In addition to Washington and Oak streets, which each span the tract north-to-south, the area includes Pearl, Fairground, Dabney and Depot streets, along with 15 smaller cross streets.

The dense, shade tree-heavy district is an assortment of historic estates cum bed and breakfasts alongside about 400 aging shotgun houses, well-maintained newer homes and dilapidated, often-abandoned shacks.

The roughly 90 businesses in the proposed zone are centered almost entirely on Washington Street, though Capweld and Kansas City Southern Railway along the river and Ergon’s Marine and Industrial Supply on Lee Street are included.

The first step will be developing a goal for each property in the zone, Mansfield said, but no specifics have been laid out and nothing is on paper until Gouras completes his plan.

&#8220We’ve driven the area once or twice and we’re trying to get an idea right now of what we have, but it’s in the very beginning stages,” Mansfield said. &#8220I do know that one aspect of it will be a lot of infrastructure improvements, street improvements, sidewalk improvements, street-lighting improvements. That will be a big portion of it.”

The city still has roughly $12 million to pay on its last bond issue, used to fund the $18 million upgrade of about two dozen downtown properties finished earlier this year. Strategic planner and city accountant Paul Rogers has said the city will pay $2 million a year through 2011 against the debt from that bond issue.

State law allows cities to designate an area under an urban renewal plan and to acquire property to sell to developers with defined conditions on how the property will be used. The legislation also allows the city to remove areas defined as slum and blight.

This goes beyond the city’s myriad everyday enforcement of ordinances – which targets broken windows, grossly unkempt yards, sagging ceilings and other structural problems – by requiring further fix-ups and some uniform aesthetics such as paint.

&#8220Code enforcement is minimum standards,” Leyens said. &#8220Under urban renewal, I can increase the standards.”

The high standards and aesthetic requirements are designed to entice developers, he added, or at least show prospective businesses that the city is serious about cleaning up some of its dilapidated properties. Attracting business and development – and subsequently raising the municipal tax base – has been among Leyens’ top priorities since his administration took office in 2001 and was the impetus behind the earlier push to revive downtown.

Some potential commercial tenants have already expressed interest in the Oak Street corridor, Leyens said last week.

&#8220I have a developer now who wants to put high-price housing on the bluff, but there are six houses in the way,” he said.

Both Leyens and South Ward Alderman Sid Beauman brought up the possibility of using eminent domain, or government power, to acquire private property, in the area if some property owners fail to comply with requested upgrades.

In the first round of urban renewal downtown, the city paid more than $2 million in property acquisition and lost an eminent domain case in court when a jury set a price the city was unwilling to pay for a car lot at Washington and First East streets.

Traditionally, governments have used eminent domain only to acquire private property to build roads and other public works. But in a controversial 5-4 decision last summer, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled the city of New London, Conn., could proceed with its acquisition of dilapidated homes in a residential neighborhood through eminent domain and replace them with office space for research and development, a hotel, new homes and a pedestrian riverwalk along a river.

The precedent could open up the previously off-limits opportunity for cities to acquire private property to sell to another private interest that serves the &#8220public good” by increasing property values and taxes paid back to local government.

Mansfield, however, predicted Vicksburg’s upcoming plan would entail little to no property acquisition. He called eminent domain &#8220an option” within the city’s power, but downplayed the likelihood it would be used. City attorney Nancy Thomas too said acquisition would not be a focus of the plan.

North Ward Alderman Michael Mayfield, who represents many of the people in the area expected to be designated for the renewal, said he also does not anticipate acquisition to be an issue.

&#8220I’m hoping that if by chance we do float a bond that eminent domain is never raised because if it comes to the point of eminent domain, then all discussions have broken down,” Mayfield said. &#8220And I don’t want to get into a situation where you’re dealing with someone else’s property…eminent domain is always 100 percent of the time the last obstacle I would use in urban renewal.”