Grand Station Casino’s parent firm should have more time to settle its debts and find a buyer for its downtown Vicksburg gaming venue, Mayor Paul Winfield said after meeting with company officials for an hour Friday.

Whether there’s time to do that before a foreclosure proceeding scheduled Monday and a slow shutdown and layoffs planned Wednesday is unknown, officials said.

“I’ll urge the Mississippi Gaming Commission to grant Delta more time to sell the casino,” Winfield said as legal and financial officers left the mayor’s office. “It would allow them to stay open.”

Delta Investments and Development LLC has said it must begin to close the casino Wednesday and lay off 211 employees unless it works out ways to satisfy all its creditors. Terminations would include employees in 21 departments, including food service workers and security personnel.

On Monday, Bally Gaming Inc. is set to foreclose on a $3 million loan to the company intended to finance new equipment and future renovations.

Plans had been submitted to the state to close the casino Friday, but the time frame was extended to Wednesday to allow for any change in circumstances, MGC executive director Allen Godfrey said.

The casino’s fate is intertwined with the city because of a lease inked in 1993 between the city and Harrah’s, which opened the casino that year. Under the agreement, the city was to receive about $562,940 a year plus 1.5 percent of the casino’s net revenues until Oct. 13, 2033.

Termination fees of $450,000 would kick in if the casino closed. The lease has been honored by each of the casino’s three operators since it was built, but current back payments run in the hundreds of thousands, Winfield said.

The gaming license would remain with Delta until it’s formally relinquished to the state. No complete applications for the license are under consideration, though a principal with Nevada-based Desoto Island Inc. pursued it before it was held by the commission for incomplete information.

An announcement of Grand Station Hotel’s sale to a firm headed by New Orleans real estate developer Kenneth W. Bickford mentioned Desoto as a possible buyer for the casino. Bickford plans to convert the hotel into a luxury condo and marina resort.

Harrah’s sold the casino and hotel to Columbia Sussex, which renamed it Horizon. Tropicana Entertainment, which was part of Columbia Sussex, took over the former Horizon’s operations and tried unsuccessfully to sell the casino in 2007. In 2010, Delta bought the casino for $3.25 million in cash plus liabilities, one of which is the lease with the city.