Whitney Downard / The Meridian StarThe Stevenson Landmark Apartments, operated by the Multi-County Community Service Agency, have been vacant since 2014. The organization hopes to restore them.

The Stevenson Landmark Apartments in Meridian have stood vacant since August 2014, when Multi-County Community Service Agency declared the historic apartments unsafe and closed them for renovations. 

“We are working with a syndicator to make that building usable again,” Ron Collier, the executive director of Multi-County, said. 

Collier asked the Meridian City Council for a resolution of support for the work on Tuesday, estimating repairs would cost between $8 million and $10 million. 

Collier said the rehabilitation would include programming such as job training programs, GED classes and mental health screenings for residents. 

“I think the essence of this property would be advantageous to the citizens of Meridian. Certainly to those who can’t afford high rent or mortgage rates,” Collier said. 

Collier said he hoped to hear about financing by the end of July and have occupants within 18 months.

“It’ll be a major investment in that area of the city,” Kim Houston, the representative for Ward 4, said during Tuesday’s meeting.

Earlier in the summer 2014, someone had turned on the building’s sprinkler system, accelerating the need for building-wide fixes.

“The building is about to undergo a major renovation, and it’s not really safe or secure to have anyone living there with the type of repairs planned,” Sollie Norwood, a consultant for Multi-County, said in 2014.

In 2014, Multi-County charged $311 for a one-bedroom apartment but hadn’t made significant repairs since 1997 and said it hoped to re-open the apartments in the Spring of 2015. 

But the agency faced budget cuts that year, as reported in June 2015, and pushed back the renovations.

Multi-County, which oversees the Francis W. Davidson Center for Homelessness, has operated the building and provided housing for the elderly there since 1995, according to the Mississippi Department of Archives and History.

MDAH named the building, built in 1911, a Mississippi landmark in 1979. The school stands on the site of the first public school for white children in Meridian built in 1885.