One week before an eminent domain hearing was set for Warren County Court, the parties with an interest in the Kuhn Memorial Hospital property have either turned over or sold their interest in the property to the city.

“Most of the parties involved have agreed not to contest it, and two that have purchased it in a tax sale are willing to let the city buy their interest in the property,” City Attorney Nancy Thomas told the Board of Mayor and Aldermen Monday.

The board Monday approved a resolution to settle with Easthaven Ventures and Symbiotic Partners, who agreed to cash settlements totaling $2,980, with Easthaven getting $1,700, and Symbiotic getting $1,280. The settlement involves money paid at tax sales to get the property.

“I think it (the Kuhn demolition) is still on schedule,” Mayor George Flaggs Jr. said. “It’s just unfortunate it takes as much time as it takes to demolish it. But that’s how our democracy works.”

The city is seeking a federal Brownfields grant to help pay the estimated $850,000 cost of removing asbestos and razing the buildings on the property, removing an underground diesel storage tank and clearing and cleaning the property. The city must own the property to be able to apply for the grant.

“That (the grant) is still in the works,” he said.

Funded by the Environmental Protection Agency, Brownfields grants provide money to help local governments clean and renovate former hazardous material sites.

The decision to acquire the property came after 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.

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.

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 six 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 12.8-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 site 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.