[12/2/03]]Vicksburg officials backed out of a deal Monday to acquire the downtown federal courthouse and post office building after terms of the agreement changed at the last minute.

“We’re not going to burden the taxpayers at risk with a white elephant,” Mayor Laurence Leyens said after the Vicksburg Board of Mayor and Aldermen voted to rescind last week’s motion to accept the deed to the building adjacent to City Hall.

City officials said the General Services Administration, the federal government’s property manager, had altered the lease, making the deal less appealing to the city.

“It made economic sense, no matter how you looked at it, with those lease agreements,” Leyens said. But, “it no longer makes financial sense.”

No one from the GSA was at the meeting. City officials had voted unanimously to accept the deed, saying they wanted to keep the five-story structure from becoming an eyesore.

Paul Rogers, strategic planner for the city, said the agency had offered a 3-year agreement to pay rent for space federal workers still use. There was also a 2-year extension. That would have provided money to the city to pay maintenance costs.

The final paperwork showed a 5-year contract that the federal government could cancel with a 90-day notice, leaving the city treasury at risk to pay the building’s overhead.

The non-postal leases would generate about $417,000 annually in revenue. Rogers said the estimated cost to maintain the building is $317,000, although other estimates have been as high as $600,000 per year.

Rogers said the 95,000-square-foot building contains 70,000 square feet of rentable space.

The value of the building was also estimated for insurance purposes at $11 million, about $115 per square foot, and the building needs some work, including repairs to the roof, officials have said. Rogers said the lease revenues over the next three years would have covered all those costs.

The city was offered the 67-year-old building after plans were made to move the U.S. District Court to Natchez. It had become progressively empty as federal agencies moved to new or other locations.

The main level houses a postal facility with box and limited window service. The city’s main post office was moved to Pemberton Boulevard more than 10 years ago and the Crawford Street facilities have been on tenuous ground since then.

If the city had taken the deed, a separate deal for rent would have been necessary with the U.S. Post Office, if service continued there.

City officials also said they have been negotiating with Alcorn State University to rent space in the building, but those plans will not be known for certain until after the first of the year. They also said that the GSA has indicated that the building would be auctioned if the city did not acquire the property.

The post office building is the largest on the block bounded by South, Crawford, Walnut and Monroe streets and is the only one not already owned by the city.