OLD AND IN THE WAY: IS THE CITY READY TO CONDEMN OLD ST. FRANCIS HOSPITAL AND MARQUETTE HOTEL?

Paint is peeling from the walls inside the entrance of the old St. Francis Hospital.

In 1991, members of the Cape Girardeau City Council called for old St. Francis Hospital and the Marquette Hotel to be torn down, citing concerns about the safety of the abandoned buildings. Now new action is being urged.

"We've waited a long time," says Mayor Al Spradling III. "I think there's enough concern in the community about these albatrosses ... that we need to make a decision in the next six to 12 months."

Spradling, a member of the council in 1991, says the high cost of demolition has always been one of the problems. There also has been hope that someone would find a use for the hospital or that a developer would buy the hotel once riverboat gambling was approved. Or that the proposed new Federal Building would be built at one site or the other.

None of those hopes appears realistic at present.

The Family Resource Center, an organization founded by state Rep. Mary Kasten, R-Cape Girardeau, still is interested in buying the old hospital. It wants to put a variety of social services under one roof to help people who lack transportation, and the old hospital's site on the south side is perfect.

But Gov. Mel Carnahan dropped the study of the project from his last budget. Kasten's trying again this year.

"We're going to have to bite the bullet at some point and go after the buildings and get them torn down," Spradling says.

Old St. Francis Hospital is the primary target of those asking for the city to act. Last week, after years of unsuccessfully boosting various uses for the building, the Haarig Area Development Corp. urged City Hall to take it down. The Haarig area is along Good Hope Street.

City Councilman Tom Neumeyer is leading the charge to do something about the building, though he is hardly alone. "I think the time has come to do something about it," City Manager Michael Miller says.

The hospital has a sentimental place in Cape Girardeau's history. Many residents of a certain age were born there. But since being vacated in 1985, scavengers have stripped every retrievable scrap of copper and aluminum from the walls, and all the air conditioners have disappeared. Transients sometimes break in to sleep. Many of the windows have been broken out, and the brick walls sport graffiti.

Though structurally sound, the building has become a symbol of the gradual deterioration residents on the city's South Side have seen happening all around them for many years.

Joyce Jenkins, who lives behind the hospital on South Ellis Street, wants the building torn down if nobody wants to buy it. Residents take its continued decline and disuse as signs the city doesn't care.

Neumeyer says the community groups he belongs to or talks to are ready for some action. "In the last couple of months it has been the main topic of concern," he said. "If we can't save it, let's help save the surrounding neighborhood."

Neumeyer says the city also should consider demolition of the Marquette Hotel, which was shut down by the state in 1971 because of safety violations. (See related story.)

He plans to bring the issue of condemnation up at tonight's City Council meeting.

Cape Girardeau Police Cpl. Charlie Herbst, president of the Downtown Neighborhood Association, says the consensus at the last meeting of his organization was to demolish old St. Francis.

"The building has sat there so long it's past go," he said.

Herbst said the hospital parking lot at Good Hope and Ellis has been a site for drug dealing in the past. But no crimes have been reported on the hospital grounds since 1993.

Those who do get inside illegally are in danger, he says, because elevator shafts are exposed and some stairwells are missing.

Under the city's fire prevention ordinance, the cost of demolishing a condemned building becomes a special assessment against the property and becomes the personal debt of the owner. The debt can be paid in installments over a period of not more than 10 years at 8 percent yearly interest.

The old hospital at Pacific and Good Hope is owned by the Peter Dern estate, which is in probate and the subject of an estimated 125 tax liens. Demolition would add another lien Neumeyer doubts ever would be collected.

Neumeyer has suggested that a bond issue could pay for razing the building. Miller said he has not heard of other cities employing such a method of getting rid of unwanted buildings.

Spradling would oppose raising property taxes. He would look more favorably on condemning the properties for a public purpose, also known as eminent domain.

"We have to pay fair market value for them if we condemn them for a public purpose," he said. "But then we own them and we can tear them down."

The safety of the buildings would not be an issue under eminent domain.

Miller said the subject of demolishing both buildings will be brought up as the city's next budget is formulated. That cost has been estimated in some quarters at $500,000 apiece.

Safety probably would be the issue in deciding whether the building qualifies for condemnation, housing officer Steve Williams says.

Violations of the city's fire prevention or building code are defects that can lead the city to initiate its condemnation procedure.

Herbst says that corner of Good Hope and Pacific would be better off with senior housing, a community center, a park or even a business. "Something as a cornerstone to rehabilitate the neighborhood," he said.