It’s back to square one for the Ceres Plantation House.

Four of five members of the Warren County Port Commission agreed Monday to take new offers to remove and/or demolish the old farm house, a smaller pool house and a barn located on a 41-acre section of property at the Ceres Research and Industrial Interplex just off the Flowers exit from Interstate 20. Two proposals taken in February to demolish the main structure and the pool house were thrown out.

“I just want to give it one more shot at moving it,” chairman Johnny Moss said, adding publicity generated by eight months of talk over a possible state landmark status might bring out serious offers to move rather than raze the house, built in the 1830s and altered multiple times.

Members of the Mississippi Department of Archives and History Board of Trustees decided against designating the house a state landmark. The panel said the house didn’t meet criteria that limits changes on historic homes, buildings and various other sites.

Monday’s vote was unanimous, though ideas ranged from going with the two offers, which were from $23,500 to $24,184, to donating the house to use as a firefighter training apparatus. The two-story, six-bedroom structure has housed several businesses through the years, the last being a plant nursery which closed in 2007.

Using the idle “spec building” on the industrial park’s east side as a shell for a new Warren County Jail proved to be a hot potato for supervisors and commissioners Monday reacting to statements last week by District 1 Supervisor David McDonald in a civic club speech during which he said the 64,000 square-foot building might be the best place to build one.

As supervisors concluded their Monday morning session, District 3 Supervisor Charles Selmon took the chance to remind the room, as cable access television cameras rolled, that the full board hadn’t publicly discussed the option. The issue came up briefly as commissioners debated the plantation house.

“The board didn’t discuss it, and that’s all that needs to be said about that,” Board President Richard George said.

McDonald said last week the spec building site and its surrounding property are ideal because its flatter terrain would be easy to develop. Consultants who studied the size and scope of a new jail said the site’s distance from the middle of Vicksburg, particularly the courthouse, is a liability. Moss has said the building, which was completed in 1995 without an interior floor and would need additional access roads and a parking lot, serves as an inducement for industries.

Ideal dimensions of a new jail dictate a 350-bed facility on a 20- to 50-acre site, with capacity expandable to 650 beds in the future, according to the study completed in April by Colorado-based Voorhis/Robertson Justice Services.