Though a vote on whether to demolish a portion of the abandoned Kuhn Memorial Hospital on Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard has been delayed until September, support for bringing down the entire complex is growing.

The city’s original proposal offered up by Community Development Director Victor Gray-Lewis was to knock down the front building at Kuhn. That structure is decaying and infested with black mold. The roof is caving in and the Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality has said they will not make the city go though the asbestos abatement process.

“It’s going to be a lot less expensive,” City Attorney Nancy Thomas told the Board of Mayor and Alderman.

The second smaller building, in which 69-year-old Sharen Wilson was killed earlier this year, is also full of asbestos. Is not as dilapidated and MDEQ has not given any special clearance.

It’s beyond time for both buildings to go and we agree with North Ward Alderman Michael Mayfield’s call to examine the cost of tearing down both buildings.

“We need to find out how much it would cost to take all that property down,” Mayfield said. “Personally, I’m sick and tired of seeing the entire structure, and as far as I am concerned, you can push every bit of it off the hill. It wouldn’t bother me a bit, because it’s an eyesore, it’s been an eyesore for years, nobody has stepped up to the plate, and every time you turn around, someone throws a wrench in.”

One of those wrenches was talk of turning the smaller building into housing, which we think would be inappropriate given the grizzly killing that took place there. Mayfield agreed.

“I just don’t see anybody going in there and turning it into some sort of assisted living or something like that. That’s what I was told years ago, they were going to make it into an assisted living (facility),” he said.

Whatever the cost for removing the buildings, we think it will be worth it.