The City of Vicksburg will back off plans to raze a Washington Street building whose owner has defaulted on mortgage payments, Mayor Laurence Leyens said Tuesday.

&#8220The city is postured to tear the building down, but it is our understanding the mortgagee is foreclosing on the property right now,” he said. &#8220We want to give (the next owner) the opportunity to save the property.”

Vickie Bailey owns the building at 2627 Washington St., once an ice cream parlor. Victor Gray-Lewis, the city’s director of buildings and inspections, maintains the building is unsafe and needs to be demolished or repaired. It has no roof.

In February, Bailey filed a petition in Warren County Circuit Court to stop Vicksburg officials from razing the building. That lawsuit has not been decided. However, Leyens said Bailey has obtained a permit to continue working on the property until foreclosure proceedings are complete.

&#8220We don’t know what’s going on,” he said. &#8220Vickie has asked us for a building permit to repair the building, and we have done that for her. We are just kind of backing off and seeing what happens with that.”

Bailey’s attorney, Eugene Perrier, acknowledged the foreclosure but said he could not comment on the litigation.

&#8220To my knowledge, she has not paid the deed of trust on the note,” he said. &#8220I really can’t say anything about what the city is doing.”

The highest bidder will be awarded the property, according to a legal advertisement.

Bailey’s previous attorney, Toni W. Terrett, asked to be removed as her counsel because Bailey was not responding to the attorney’s communications, according to court records. Circuit Judge Isadore Patrick granted that request.

Bailey bought the old Sutton Ice Cream building in July 2004 from The Pratt and Associates Limited Partnership. Josephine Pratt could not be reached.

In January, Bailey, a former city employee and twice a candidate for alderman, was given 30 days to take action to keep the building from being torn down by the city. The roof has been in disrepair and was in danger of collapsing onto the street below, Leyens has said.

Former owners of the building have said the property is known as the Sutton Ice Cream building, for the ice-cream parlor that occupied it until the early 1960s.

After that business closed, the building was a laundromat called the Sunshine Center, James McGee, former co-owner of the building from about 1976 until 1987, has said.

Cloud Sheet Metal and an engineering business were also operated from the back of the building, another former owner, Chancery Clerk Dot McGee, has said.