The city of Vicksburg has hired a Madison-based environmental consulting firm to prepare the application for an Environmental Protection Agency Brownfield grant and perform a hazardous materials assessment for the front building on the Kuhn Hospital property on Martin Luther King Boulevard.

The Board of Mayor and Aldermen Wednesday approved two contracts with Earthcon to prepare the Brownfield grant application for funds to raze the back buildings on the property, and to do an environmental assessment on the larger building facing Martin Luther King for asbestos, lead and PCBs, a hazardous material used in the manufacturing of items such as microscope oils, electrical insulators, capacitors, and electric appliances like television sets or refrigerators.

Under the contracts, Earthcon will perform the environmental assessment for $3,750, and prepare the Brownfield grant application at no charge. The environmental assessment is required for any loan the city may seek to raze the front building.

The move comes after the Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality refused to lift a $250,000 cap on state Brownfield loans. City officials asked DEQ to lift the cap, which would have allowed the city to borrow up to $650,000 to remove the buildings and clear the property. The city is applying for a low interest $250,000 state Brownfield CAP loan to raze the large building, but will have purchase the property to qualify for the money.

Four different parties have an interest in the Kuhn property, which in the past has been sold several times at county tax sales. City officials have to not talked with representatives from the four entities.

“We have hired Central Mississippi Planning and Development District to prepare an urban renewal plan for the property, and we’ve decided not to talk with the parties until we get the plan, which should be in the next few weeks,” Community Development Director Victor Grey-Lewis said. “The state’s urban renewal law has provisions for eminent domain. I’m not saying the city will use it, but it will be an option.”

Eminent domain allows governments to take private property and convert it to public use, provided it gives the owner reasonable compensation for the property. The board has discussed converting the property into a development of single-family homes and a park for recreation.

A former city hospital, the city sold Kuhn to the State of Mississippi in 1956 for $5, and the state operated the facility as a charity hospital, initially known as the Vicksburg Charity Hospital, until 1989, when Gov. Ray Mabus closed the state’s charity hospital.

The city regained the property in 1990 under an agreement with the state to turn it over to a private corporation.

In 1993, the building was considered as a possible veterans home, and in 1994, it was considered for a possible 38-bed adolescent psychiatric ward.

In 1999, the building was sold to the Lassiter-Studdard Group Inc., which planned to open a 100-bed clinic and assisted living center.

The plans fell through, and in 2000, the company donated the building to the Esther Stewart Buford Foundation.

The board on July 6 put the 12.5-acre property under the slum clearance ordinance in a move to step up its efforts to remove the complex’s main building in the aftermath of the abduction and murder of Sharen Wilson, whose body was found on the property June 28.

Police said Wilson was killed in the back building and her body was left on the property, where ghost hunters who were on the property found it.

When the parties with an interest in the property failed to present plans to either raze or renovate the two buildings on the site in September, it cleared the way for their demolition.

Community Development Director Victor Grey-Lewis said in October the city was applying through the State of Mississippi for a $7.3 million U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development National Disaster Resilience grant that would provide the funds to raze and clear the Kuhn property and transform it into a housing development of 35 to 40 single-family homes. The competitive grants will be awarded in mid-January.

The money is part of HUD’s $1 billion National Disaster Resilience Competition to help communities hit by natural disasters between 2011 and 2013 become more viable. Vicksburg qualifies because of the 2011 spring Mississippi River Flood, which flooded areas of the city as the river reached a record level of 57.1 feet, .9 feet more than the 1927 flood.