The new owners of the 100-year-old Monte Carlo building at 913 Washington St. want to transform it into a multicultural facility to help residents and visitors learn more about Vicksburg’s heritage.

“I’m considering many options for the building,” Linda Fondren said. “It has a wonderful history.”

Fondren and her husband, James, bought the building and an adjacent vacant lot for $240,000 from Vicksburg resident Malcolm Carson.

“We are real estate developers,” Linda Fondren said. “We looked at the building and realized there are many possibilities to transform it into something that will teach tourists and residents about the city’s history and culture. We want something that will fit well with that beautiful museum that the Corps of Engineers is building across the street.”

Fondren said she will meet with consultants, city and state officials, downtown business owners and residents before making decisions on the building. One of the first things she will do, she said, is clean its front and interior.

“We’re extremely pleased that she purchased the building and she’s going to rehab it,” said Nancy Bell, executive director of the Vicksburg Foundation for Historic Preservation.

Bell called the Fondrens’ plans for the building “a good use for it, especially with all the other attractions we have in that area.”

The building is at Washington and Jackson streets, south of Rusty’s Riverfront Grill and across from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ Lower Mississippi Interpretive Center and the MV Mississippi.

Carson bought the building in 2010 from Joe Farris, a Vicksburg native who lives in California. He said Farris owned the building for about 40 years.

Carson planned to turn the building into an African-American history museum, but said plans fell through for lack of funding.

“I’m sorry I couldn’t build my dream,” he said, “but the building is in good hands.”

The building was constructed in 1911 for Christian and Burroughs Co., which built wagons and carriages. It was later used by a car dealership, selling Packards, Hudsons and Essex automobiles and parts.

The dealership stayed in the building until the late 1920s, and a 7-Up bottling plant used it until the 1960s.

It was later turned into a nightclub owned jointly by Farris and Jesse Smith and called the Monte Carlo, which gained notoriety as a dance hall that booked regional and national rhythm and blues acts in the 1970s and early ’80s.

Smith, 76, who worked in the 7-Up plant, sold his share in the club in 1984. He said the Monte Carlo was followed by a series of clubs, “but none of them did any good. Joe wanted me to come back and manage a club, but I told him I was too old.”

The building deteriorated and in 2007, the city razed the north section of the building, which was damaged during Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

Carson’s plans for a museum coincided with another group’s plans to move another city landmark downtown as a multicultural interpretive center and folk art museum.

The group called Save Margaret’s Grocery began an effort in 2010 to save Vicksburg’s famed folk-art “Bible castle” on North Washington Street and move it south to a block between Jackson and China streets, the site of the Vicksburg Farmers’ Market this year.

Suzi Altman of Jackson, a member of Save Margaret’s Grocery, said the project is at a standstill because of a lack of funding.