[11/12/04]With nearly 75 percent of the preliminary plans and drawings complete, the new owner of the downtown post office and federal courthouse says all that remains to do is decide what to put in the building.

“All I’ve got to do now is decide which direction to go,” said Ben Duckworth, president of the Courthouse Partners LLC, which purchased the property this summer.

Separately, a local Realtor said this week that a contract is pending for the sale of the vacant Kmart building on Pemberton Square Boulevard.

Duckworth, who paid $635,000 for the 69-year-old downtown federal courthouse, said he is talking with hotel operators, but is also considering high-end residential apartments for the property. He said the decision will likely be made by the end of the year.

In the meantime, Duckworth is working with design architect Richard McNeel of the firm Johnson, Bailey, Henderson and McNeel of Jackson on plans to restore the building. The work will include upgrading the building’s electrical and HVAC systems, a new roof, asbestos abatement and repairing the limestone exterior.

About 20 years ago the outside of the building was sandblasted, damaging the limestone and leaving it soft and porous. Over the years it has become stained and mildewed and will have to be cleaned and sealed, a process that could cost at least $100,000, he said.

“We’re exhausting ourselves learning everything about the building that we can before we get started,” Duckworth said. “We’re going to turn it into a grand dame again.”

He said every aspect of the building from the basement to the roof is being studied before starting actual work. Today, the building is mostly empty except for the U.S. Attorney’s Office and post office on the first floor.

Duckworth said that any plans for the building will include the post office, but the building’s main entrance will be reconfigured. People entering the building will enter a main lobby instead. Today, the doors open into the post office box area.

“We want to keep the post office downtown because I think it’s good for downtown and what’s good for downtown is good for us,” Duckworth said. The owner will be paid rent for the space.

He could not say when renovations would begin, but that it will be “an ambitious project.”

The building had been home to the U.S. District Court operations that are being moved to Natchez. The prominent structure on Crawford Street next door to City Hall is also listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

The City of Vicksburg was offered the building for free, but turned down the deal last year because officials said the cost of maintenance would be too much for taxpayers.

The five-story building has 71,864 square feet of space.

Duckworth is an officer in the Duckworth Realty Company that owns LeFleur’s Gallery, a retail and office center in Jackson off Interstate 55. The company is also renovating the Electric Building in Jackson, a $14.8 million project expected to be finished in 2005.

While Duckworth hopes to begin working on the property by the first of next year, Pam Beard with BrokerSouth GMAC Real Estate said she hopes an agreement can be reached by the first of next month for the sale of the Kmart building.

Kmart opened the 87,000-square-foot Vicksburg store on Pemberton Boulevard in July 1991. In 1999, supermarket items were added, and the name was changed to Big Kmart.

The local Kmart closed two years ago after the national company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. The Vicksburg store was among 284 the retailer closed.

The local property owned by Jerome Pearlman & Faith Trustees has been for sale since.

Beard said she could not publicly name the developer looking at that property.