City officials are about to learn how much the Kuhn Hospital property is worth.

The Board of Mayor and Aldermen Monday approved a contract with Vicksburg real estate appraiser Bottin Consulting Group to appraise the property for the city. City Attorney Nancy Thomas said the appraisal is part of the process required for the city to acquire the property.

She did not know if the board would proceed with eminent domain, a legal process that allows the city to take private property and convert it to public use, or make an offer on the site to the four parties holding an interest in the property.

“Either way, we are required to have the property appraised,” she said.

According to property tax records with the Warren County Tax Assessor’s Office, the 12.8-acre property at 1422 Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd.is valued at $64,000.

The board in April approved a resolution adopting and authorizing a 33-page urban renewal plan to first demolish the buildings on the property and clear it, then begin the process of finding a developer or nonprofit agency to develop it into a multipurpose residential/commercial development with recreational facilities.

City officials estimate the cost of razing the three buildings on the property at $850,000.

An artist’s rendering of the proposed development accompanying the urban renewal plan envisions a community with indoor and outdoor recreation facilities including tennis and racquetball courts and gymnasium, and a residential area of single-family homes, townhouses and homes for senior citizens.

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 hospitals.

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 property has been sold four times for taxes, and city officials have been trying for at least the past 10 years to get the property owner to clean the property and demolish or renovate the buildings on the site.

The board on July 6 put the 12.5-acre property under the city’s slum clearance ordinance in a move to step up its efforts to remove the complex’s main building.

The city’s efforts to do something with the property accelerated 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 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 to begin the process for their demolition.