Story corrected to show past owner as Silver Cross Home, not Silver Cross Health and Rehab.

What’s to be done about the cracked windows and weeds at the old hospital on North Jackson and West Congress streets?

The city has talked for years about what to do about the dilapidated building where lives were once saved.

The building which was once home to King’s Daughters Hospital was built in 1922 by the Willing Hearts Circle as an upgrade to the original hospital on Chickasaw Street. But the hospital would continue to grow, and it would eventually move into a new facility on Hwy. 51 in 1964.

The building was owned by Silver Cross Home, which sold it to Railroad Investments LP of McComb.

It continued to become more of an eyesore and an embarrassment to residents. It also has the potential to become a health hazard.

“There’s not really anything that we, as the city, can do to either get it tested, to see whether or not it has asbestos, or anything else because we don’t own the property,” city inspector David Fearn said last year. “It is still private property.”

Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality last year told Fearn they don’t regulate lead paint if the building is demolished. “If it’s rehabilitated — if they use the structure and then remodel it — they would regulate it,” he said.

He told aldermen a year ago that the structure would need to be tested for asbestos through an abestos abatement company. “To take it down,” he said last year, “it would cost somewhere in the $800,000 to $1 million range, because it has to be disposed of, if it’s got asbestos, in the proper facilities.”

The three mayoral candidates each have ideas for what should happen to that property.

Republican incumbent Joe Cox, who is at the end of his first four-year term, said he and the Brookhaven Board of Aldermen have been asked why the city doesn’t tear the building down and clean up the property.

“This is a very complicated, but common issue in most municipalities, as owners of dilapidated buildings refuse to maintain their properties for various reasons,” he said. “These properties are an eyesore to the community, no doubt, but it is a complicated process to declare a building of this size a nuisance and begin the demolition process.”

Cox said because the property is privately owned it requires due process of law and statutory guidelines to take it down. That process requires notice and a hearing before the city can act, he said. After the hearing, the city may proceed to demolish the property or the landowner can carry out a plan to restore and utilize the property.

“Should the city decide to tear the building down, the city would bear the full cost of demolition and debris removal from the premises to a licensed landfill according to the law. The cost to the city would be prohibitive,” he said.

Cox said the city could file a lien against the property “and hopefully recoup our expenses in the event the property eventually sells, but that process often fails to regain the total funds spent to to remove the building.”

He does not want the city to be responsible for the upfront cost of demolishing the building. “I do not believe it is prudent financial management to spend extraordinary amounts of municipal and taxpayer funds on a project that does not offer the city the opportunity to recoup its entire investment,” he said.

Cox said he has expressed concerns over the condition of the property with the owner. “We have asked him to provide us with his plans for the restoration and use of the property but have not received any data,” he said.

John Roberts Jr., his Republican opponent, said growth in the city has been stifled by restriction, while “dilapidated buildings have been allowed to continue rotting for years.”

He said the result is a “stagnant stage where, if left unaddressed, the city shall continue to age, decline and become dilapidated as a whole.”

He said Brookhaven should take great measures to encourage growth, new business, new construction and new jobs.

“Zoning ordinances should be enforced so that dilapidated buildings are eliminated and growth encouraged in their place,” he said.

David D. Smith, the lone Democrat running for mayor, said the building should be demolished by the owners.