[09/05/03] David Gibson’s message to his fellow Wildwood Community Association members was clear: After 42 years of living on Marian Lane, he isn’t ready for neighborhood property values to plummet and crime to increase.

Gibson said Thursday night those are possibilities if the former ParkView Regional Medical Center is torn down. He also said he has learned the building may be razed soon.

Wildwood was developed north of Grove Street in the 1950s when the Sisters of Mercy bought then-outlying land. Part of the tract was used for the medical complex, which opened in 1957, and the rest was sold off in lots along streets named for members of the Catholic order of nuns.

Gibson, vice president of the community association, told about 35 members of the Wildwood association gathered in the Anshe Chesed Temple that if the old hospital goes down, they should fight anything encouraging crime and lowering their property values.

The group plans to attend a City Board meeting to let officials know their positions and to circulate a petition among the 99 homes in the neighborhood drawing attention to the situation. Many people at the meeting said the hospital land could be zoned for similar houses to those in the neighborhood, the average value of which is about $100,000.

“If something else comes in, then property values will go down,” Gibson told the group.

However, others said they wouldn’t object to a medical plaza or a higher education center built there.

The medical center itself has been vacant since February 2002, when the $123 million River Region Medical Center opened on U.S. 61 North. From the time construction was announced, River Region officials said they would sell or remove the six-story building in a reasonable time, and would not let it become a derelict.

Kelli McDaniel, who is organizing the Wildwood neighborhood picnic this year, said she wouldn’t want to live anywhere else. But the uncertainty surrounding the ParkView property is making many people in her neighborhood nervous.

“I’m scared to death of what’s going to happen,” she said.

Vicksburg Mayor Laurence Leyens said Dr. Briggs Hopson, River Region Medical Center director, recently asked him to suggest demolition crews that could handle taking down such a large structure.

Gibson said he had not heard from Hopson, who was not available today.

River Region spokesman Diane Gawronski said she wasn’t aware of imminent removal of the building, and that River Region is still trying to sell or donate the property.

Joe Hendon, a real estate broker in Jackson working to find a new owner for the building, said potential buyers were looking at it about three weeks ago.

Gawronski said the 26-acre property is regularly maintained to keep it from becoming an eyesore to the area. “Tearing that building down will be our last resort,” she said.

North Ward Alderman Gertrude Young, who attended the meeting, said the property has lots of potential for many things, including more houses or a medical plaza. She also said Alcorn State University may be interested in building a smaller facility there if the medical center is razed. ASU involvement has been talked, but no serious steps taken toward classroom or other use of the structure.

The Street Clinic and Marian Hill, a chemical dependency treatment center, are still in use at the ParkView site.