The city of Vicksburg could begin taking the steps to acquire the Kuhn Memorial property after April 18.

That’s when the Board of Mayor and Aldermen is expected to approve a resolution to start implementing a 10-year urban renewal plan for the property, which begins with razing the buildings on the property and removing the debris. A project Community Development Director Victor Gray-Lewis said is estimated at about $850,000.

Once the resolution is approved, City Attorney Nancy Thomas said, the board will hire an appraiser to determine the value of the property, adding the city is considering acquiring the site through eminent domain, a legal process that allows the city to take private property and convert it to public use. No money, however, is presently in the budget for demolition or acquiring the property, Mayor George Flaggs Jr. said.

“That would clear the title up,” Thomas said. “To acquire the property, we would have to have clear title, and it (eminent domain) would probably be the most economical way to do it.”

The city must acquire the property to qualify for a $250,000 low-interest Brownfields CAP loan from the Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality to help cover the cost of demolition. City officials are also seeking a Brownfield grant from the Environmental Protection Agency.

The board authorized Thomas to prepare the resolution after a public hearing Friday on the urban renewal plan in which only one person spoke about the plan.

“The first year at least get it down,” resident Ernest Galloway told the board. “If you do the investment, follow up on it, because I’m going to be behind you. I was born there; I hate to see the building go, but we’ve given people opportunity after opportunity to do something with it. It’s time to come down. If it takes borrowing money, let’s tear it down to the ground.”

Flaggs said the board’s move is the first step in a plan to try and clear up blighted properties in the city, citing other large vacant properties like the old Mercy Hospital and clinic on McAuley Drive, the old YMCA on Clay Street and the old U.S. Post Office building on Crawford Street.

“If you don’t take the first step, you’ll never get to the end (improving vacant properties),” he said. “It’s a start and it’s something future administrations and anybody else can hold on and look at. At least give this board credit for a start and not turning a blind eye.”

Flaggs said he and some of his family members were born at Kuhn and as a state representative he tried to keep it open.

“The state played with it, private owners played with it, the city played with it. Everybody’s played with it, now it’s an eyesore to the community,” he said. “We’ve ignored it and now it’s time to do something about it.”

He said the proposed plan for the property “will speak volumes, because it’s going to deal with housing, it’s going to deal with recreation, it’s going to deal with other things.”

The board in February accepted the 33-page urban renewal plan for Kuhn that outlines the city’s reasons for the finding, describing the property’s and the buildings’ conditions with photographs, and presents a plan to acquire the property and improve it, and develop it with a mixed residential-commercial and recreational area.

The city’s Planning Commission in March approved the plan, ruling it conformed with the city’s comprehensive plan, and sent it back to the board for final action.

An artist’s rendering of the proposed development accompanying the urban renewal plan envisions a community with indoor and outdoor recreation facilities including tennis and racquetball courts and gymnasium, and a residential area of single-family homes, townhouses and homes for senior citizens.

A former city hospital, the city sold Kuhn to the State of Mississippi in 1956 for $5, and the state operated the facility as a charity hospital, initially known as the Vicksburg Charity Hospital, until 1989, when Gov. Ray Mabus closed the state’s charity hospitals.

The city regained the property in 1990 under an agreement with the state to turn it over to a private corporation.

In 1993, the building was considered as a possible veterans home, and in 1994, it was considered for a possible 38-bed adolescent psychiatric ward.

In 1999, the building was sold to the Lassiter-Studdard Group Inc., which planned to open a 100-bed clinic and assisted living center.

The plans fell through, and in 2000 the company donated the building to the Esther Stewart Buford Foundation.

The property has been sold four times for taxes, and city officials have been trying for at least the past 10 years to get the property owner to clean the property and demolish or renovate the buildings on the site.

The board on July 6 put the 12.5-acre property under the city’s slum clearance ordinance in a move to step up its efforts to remove the complex’s main building in the aftermath of the abduction and murder of Sharen Wilson, whose body was found on the property June 28.

Police said Wilson was killed in the back building and her body left on the property, where ghost hunters who were on the property found it.

When the parties with an interest in the property failed to present plans to either raze or renovate the two buildings on the site in September, it cleared the way to begin the process for their demolition.