A restaurant near City Front will be renovated and stay in business under a proposal approved Tuesday by Vicksburg officials.

LD’s Kitchen, 1111 Mulberry St., will be sold to the business owner, Larry D. Prentiss Sr., for a token fee on the condition that Prentiss invest at least $160,000 in improvements, the amount the city paid to purchase it.

Prentiss, who has been a city tenant for about three years, said his plan is to hire contractors to begin working on the building &#8220very soon.”

&#8220The outside’s going to look different,” Prentiss said, adding that seating area inside will remain about the same size, but would be remodeled.

The renovations are expected to result in an increase in business Prentiss hopes will create additional jobs.

&#8220It’s going to make a big impact,” Prentiss said.

The city purchased the building and several others, including the Levee Street Depot, as part of its City Front redevelopment. Nearby structures, including a former package store and ice plant, were razed last year.

Prentiss, who has said he wanted to stay in business at the location, said LD’s Kitchen employs about 12 people fulltime and 15 to 20 parttime.

Prentiss opened a second LD’s location, at 2600 Halls Ferry Road, on Dec. 13. He said that location offers more variety, but that once renovations to the Mulberry Street location are complete both restaurants will offer customers about the same choices.

In a separate announcement Tuesday, Mayor Laurence Leyens was authorized to accept a $52,900 grant from the Mississippi Department of Archives and History for the planned $2.5 million transportation museum planned for the depot building. The newly awarded money is to be used for the laying of railroad track for the display of railcars, said museum organizer Lamar Roberts of the Vicksburg Battlefield Museum.

Current plans call for the museum to open in late March or early April of 2008 with exhibits on transportation to, from and through Vicksburg by land, water and air, Roberts said.

Renovations using a $1.6 million Mississippi Department of Transportation grant are planned for the depot’s interior. Tracks for the display cars are to be placed north of the depot, in an area that is now a parking area and which would need to be crossed or used by workers making those renovations, Roberts said. The tracks will not be installed, therefore, until after all major interior renovations to the depot’s interior are complete, Roberts said.

&#8220Once the inside is fixed up we’ll have several months” of additional work to construct museum exhibits, Roberts added.

One building is between LD’s and the depot. Known as the old Merchant Company building, it is marked with a for-sale sign. Johnny Reynolds said he owns the building and that his asking price is $265,000.

City Front was in an urban-renewal area created by the city in 2002. The LD’s building was one of several purchased in the downtown area with public funds, then resold to developers who promised to invest at least as much as the public funds expended.

Also nearby are the Art Park at Catfish Row and a series of Riverfront Murals. The largest project is a planned $12 million U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Lower Mississippi River Museum and Interpretive Site, to include a fixed display of the former flagship vessel of the Corps’ Vicksburg-based Mississippi Valley Division.

Initially, the redevelopment area was to extend a greater distance to the north, including private furniture store and used car properties. After city officials declined to pay the price an eminent domain jury set for the used-car dealership property, they also dropped plans for a forced purchase of the furniture store.

The City Front area is one of the city’s most historic, the docking site for steamboats that were the backbone of area river and rail commerce until about 100 years ago.