All Saints’ Episcopal School, forced to close its doors due to debt in 2006, may get a new life as a regional base for AmeriCorps programs as early as next winter, school and state officials said.

This is the second academic year that the 99-year-old school on Confederate Avenue did not accept students. The school closed last year after three years of fundraising efforts did not raise enough to carry the school through another year.

Bishop Duncan M. Gray III of the Episcopal Diocese of Mississippi, chairman of the school’s board, said, “My hope was that we could have the facility leased by now, but that deadline has come and gone.

“We have opened up negotiations with other interested people,” he said, but “my first choice is to lease it to AmeriCorps. We’re going to cross our fingers on that.”

Owned by the dioceses of Mississippi, Arkansas, Louisiana and Western Louisiana, the school opened in 1908 as an all-girls college. Later, it became a co-educational boarding and day school for students in grades 7-12. The school enrolled 124 students its last year of operation. The 40-acre campus is home to nine buildings, an administrative and classroom building, five dorms, a chapel and a gym. The property also includes two soccer fields, tennis courts, a competition-sized swimming pool and a pavilion. Three single-family residences, each with a one-car garage, are also on the site. In late 2006, the property was valued at $5.3 million to $6 million by Maryland company Equity Partners Inc.

Keeping the property in good repair is a serious financial drain, said Gray. He estimated maintenance costs at around $25,000 a month.

Although other parties have expressed interest in the property, those plans have not come to fruition, said Gray. “We’re trying our best to find a suitable tenant — one that we hope is consistent with (school founder Bishop Theodore) Bratton’s original vision,” said Gray.

“We’re close,” to an answer said Marsha Meeks Kelly, executive director of the Mississippi Commission for Volunteer Service. “Hopefully we’ll know something by Christmas.”

Created in 1993 by former President Bill Clinton, AmeriCorps is a program of the Corporation for National and Community Service, an independent government agency created to connect people with opportunities to volunteer. More than 2,000 nonprofit, faith-based and public organizations are involved with projects from running after-school programs, teaching computer skills, cleaning parks and streams and responding to disasters.

Three programs fall under the AmeriCorps umbrella — AmeriCorps State and National, AmeriCorps VISTA and AmeriCorps NCCC.

Kelly said the school campus would most likely be home to an AmeriCorps National Civilian Community Corps or NCCC, a 10-month full-time residential program for men and women ages 18-24. Members are required to complete 1,700 hours of service.

The NCCC operates bases in Denver, Maryland and Sacramento, Calif. An NCCC base in Charleston, S.C., was recently closed after the lease on the property expired. Kelly said establishing another base in the South is critical. A Mississippi office would be ideal because Congress has asked AmeriCorps volunteers to spend 60 percent of their service time on the Gulf Coast, said Kelly. Although some AmeriCorps personnel are operating out of a small office in Hattiesburg, Kelly said, most teams must travel across the country to reach project sites.

The Senate Appropriations Committee recently approved more than $31.7 million to fund AmeriCorps NCCC programs. Locally, the investment in the All Saints’ campus would be between $3 million and $5 million, said Kelly. “It really will be good for the community,” said Kelly adding the support of Mississippi Sen. Thad Cochran has been critical in getting the proposed project this far. The bill remains in conference.

“Imagine the 200 folks that you’ll be seeing around the city,” said Kelly. “You’ll get young people who would never have thought to come to Mississippi,” and “I can’t imagine a more welcoming community,” than Vicksburg.

“They’ll come back to a beautiful campus,” after working, Kelly said. The campus would host graduations, orientations and training programs. “It will operate pretty efficiently — like a little military base.”

If funding for the program is not cut and the bill passes the president’s desk, getting the program off the ground would still be a year-long process, Kelly said. “I can’t imagine that members would be on the ground until probably the winter,” she said. The exact date that the full program would come into operation is “anybody’s guess,” said Kelly. “There’s a process for everything.”