Vicksburg has a huge white elephant in the city: Mercy Hospital.

The deserted seven-story hospital towers over the east side of the city. Instead of housing patients for treatment, it now serves as a shelter for transient visitors passing through town and, if I remember my childhood, a place where children can (but shouldn’t) explore.

Built in 1957, the former Mercy/ParkView Regional Medical Center building on the corner of McAuley Drive and Grove Street has been vacant since February 2002, when Merit Health River Region opened. In August 2001, hospital officials said they were seeking a buyer for the hospital and were also discussing its possible donation to Alcorn State University but talks with Alcorn failed.

At one time, the 330,000-square-foot building located on 16.27 acres off McAuley Drive was listed on the real estate website LoopNet.com with a $2.1 million price tag.

In 2011, Mountain of Faith Ministries promoted a plan to convert the nuns’ convent on the property into a homeless shelter, but the plan was dropped because of serious opposition from residents in the neighboring Wildwood Subdivision.

In February 2021, Coast Airsoft, a Norcross, Ga.-based company that offers people the opportunity to participate in military-type experiences, used the Mercy Hospital building for one of its events, “Operation Bone Strike V.”

Now, the city is taking a look at the hospital. The Environmental Protection Agency has approved a one-year extension on a Brownfields assessment grant to examine the building.

“We’d like to see what’s in there to do a Phase 1 and Phase 2 environmental (assessment),” Community Development Director Jeff Richardson said after Monday’s Board of Mayor and Aldermen meeting, adding that the city has no plans to buy the building. “We just want to see what’s there.”

I took a walk through a portion of the hospital in 2021 when I did a story on Coast Airsoft’s “Operation Bone Strike V” event. The few floors I traversed were full of dust and dirt with trash and what looked like some discarded equipment and material on the floor. There were some areas where walls had been damaged and some telephone wires were hanging down.

I’m no engineer or architect, but the building looked in pretty good shape and it will be interesting to see what the environmental assessments will show and how the city proceeds once the results are known.

If the assessments indicate that the hospital building is an environmental hazard, will it be razed? If no hazards are found, will some company or non-profit find a way to develop the former hospital into something that will benefit the community and live in harmony with the neighborhood?

That’s a lot of questions begging for answers, and the fate of the old Mercy Hospital may still be decades away.

But one thing can be said; Mercy Hospital is a victim of modern times. It became obsolete as medical science improved and the needs of the community required administration at the time to move medical services to an area that was more accessible and allowed room for expansion.

And Mercy Hospital was left alone; a victim of technology and time.