The owner of a building on Grove Street that the City of Vicksburg wanted to demolish received approval Tuesday to install a balcony on its front.

The Vicksburg Board of Architectural Review gave Malcolm Carson and his partner, architect Skippy Tuminello, approval to install the balcony and open a courtyard in the rear of the building at 718 Grove St. as part of a plan to renovate it.

Carson, a City of Vicksburg employee in the Community Services Department, is restoring the building and said he wants to have a business on the first floor and an apartment on the second.

The board in March gave Carson and the owners of the adjoining buildings at 717 and 723 Grove St., near the intersection with Washington Street, a 60-day extension to develop plans for renovating the structures or have them razed.

Carson said he is working on an agreement to acquire the building at 723 Grove St., which is east of his building. Tuminello told the board Tuesday that the building at 717 Grove St., which shares a common wall with Carson’s building, is gutted and needs to be razed.

City planner Paula Wright said she did not know when the buildings were built, but city records indicate Carson’s building was built before 1890. She said pictures of the building during that time show that it had a balcony, which allowed the board to approve Tuminello’s plan. The city’s architectural preservation ordinance allows property owners to install such fixtures as balconies if there is evidence they existed on the building at one time.

Tuminello said Carson’s building was built first, and the other buildings were added later. He said the building at 717 Grove is the only one sharing a common wall with Carson’s building.

“I hate to see anything like this destroyed,” he said. “I look at these old buildings as an industry for the city. People come here to look at these old buildings. We need to have a good-looking downtown.”