The 102-year-old Levee Street Depot — for years expected to house a private transportation museum — could be much more, Mayor Laurence Leyens said Wednesday, suggesting the Vicksburg Convention and Visitors Bureau, Vicksburg Main Street and Vicksburg-Warren County Chamber of Commerce also be tenants in the city-owned building.

“We’re proposing the museum be located on the first floor, a library and shared conference room on the second floor and the agencies’ offices on the third floor,” Leyens said. “It’s a natural place for all three agencies to be located.”

Leyens has been meeting with the directors of all three agencies to try to draw up a suitable long-term lease agreement. He has also asked the Mississippi Department of Transportation for permission to modify its pledge of $1.65 million in matching grant money announced for the museum in March 2007.

“We’re waiting on a response. I don’t foresee any problem with that, but even if they decide they only want to fund the museum portion we’ll still go ahead with the plan — it just means we may have to spend $100,000 making the office spaces,” said Leyens.

Leyens said having all three groups in one building would save the agencies money by sharing equipment. The close quarters would also afford the agencies a better position to work together to strengthen tourism and economic development in the city, he said.  He speculated it would take about a year for the renovations to be complete on the building if all three agree to a lease.

Vicksburg Main Street became the first agency to jump on board with the idea Wednesday, voting unanimously at a special called meeting to support the plan and allow board chairman Harry Sharp to proceed with a lease negotiation.

“It doesn’t have to be perfect for it to work, we can always work toward perfection down the road,” said Sharp. “Ultimately, we all have the same goal in mind, to make Vicksburg grow and make it a better place to live. We just need to bite the bullet and go ahead and do it. ”

Approximately $408,000 is needed in local matching funds to secure the MDOT grant and a separate $53,900 grant awarded to the museum by the Mississippi Department of Archives and History, Leyens said. He is proposing the VCVB pay $150,000 of the matching funds and the chamber of commerce give the city its current building at 2020 Mission 66 in the deal.

“We could move our emergency management center into the chamber building, and that would fall into the acceptable uses,” said Leyens.

The chamber office sits on land owned by the city that was obtained from the National Park Service. Federal rules required it to be occupied by a nonprofit organization. Because the Vicksburg Main Street Program is funded almost entirely by the city and its offices are in city buildings, it would not be required to put up any money or property in the proposed deal, Leyens said.

The chamber, funded by member dues and large city and county checks, is a business development group. “If it’s the right thing to do financially and if it will have real benefits now and in the long run, then we’ll certainly go forward with it,” said Christi Kilroy, executive director.

Lamar Roberts, Vicksburg Transportation Museum Inc. developer and VCVB board member, said books for the library and items for museum exhibits have been collected and are ready for display. He said progress must be made on the museum before September or else the MDOT grant money will no longer be available.

“We’re well on the way, and we’ll have that done. We’ll have the architects ready, we’ve just got to get MDOT approval to any changes we want to make to the plan and go from there,” he said.

With less space than originally planned, Roberts said the transportation museum would simply rotate exhibits more often and look into securing additional box cars to place on the property as exhibit spaces.

The city purchased the depot in 2002 for approximately $295,000 as part of Leyens’ urban renewal plan for City Front, which also included the $3 million Art Park at Catfish Row and the Vicksburg Riverfront Mural project. Both those projects have come to fruition, while the Depot has remained vacant. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has said it expects the nearby MV Mississippi IV to house the Lower Mississippi River Museum and Riverfront Interpretive Center by 2011.

“It has really turned into a tourism hub for a city that keeps growing, and it just makes sense for these groups to be dead center of it,” Leyens said.

Sen. Briggs Hopson III has introduced a bill that would allow the city to lease the depot to all the agencies for up to 75 years. It has passed the Senate and is in the House local and private legislation committee.

The VCVB, a tourism development agency funded by a special tax, sold its former downtown headquarters at 1221 Washington St. — which also housed Vicksburg Main Street — in April 2008 after having been displaced following the January 2006 collapse of a nearby building that compromised the stability of the adjoining buildings. The bureau has been holding its board meetings and housing its executive offices inside a modular structure behind its visitor center at 3300 Clay St. since spring 2006, and have permission from the city to use the modular structure for its administrative office until June 1. The city can give the VCVB an extension on the agreement. Vicksburg Main Street, which has a two-person staff, has been operating from the City Hall Annex since the collapse.

“It sounds good. We just need to work out the details,” said Bill Seratt, VCVB executive director. “We very much want to be back downtown. There’s no place we could go for the kind of money (Leyens) is talking about and remain in the downtown district.”  The VCVB is remodeling and would continue to operate its welcome center on Clay Street across from the Vicksburg National Military Park entrance.

Built in 1907, the former Yazoo and Mississippi Valley Railroad Depot served rail operations until about 1950. Two restaurants have since operated in the 14,000-square-foot, three-story depot, as well as a beauty salon, apartments and a dialysis treatment center. It had been vacant for nearly a decade before the city purchased it.

Leyens previously attempted to get all three agencies to operate from the same building at 1401 Washington in October, but a deal was not reached. The agencies and their board members have been more receptive to the depot building option, said Leyens, because of the available grant money and the prominent downtown location and history.

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Contact Steve Sanoski at ssanoski@vicksburgpost.com.