NATCHEZ &045; Before the City of Natchez can sell the 2.5-acre former Pecan Factory site it owns on the Mississippi River bluff, the state Department of Archives and History must be given the opportunity to see whether the site is eligible as a state historic landmark.

That’s according to Ken P’Pool, director of historic preservation for the department, who said he first found out from a newspaper article that the city had solicited proposals for development on the site. He then called City Attorney Walter Brown to remind him of the landmark process.

In mid-August developers Ed Worley and Larry L. Brown Jr. optioned the 2.5-acre former Pecan Factory site from the city for $50,000 for six months, with a plan to buy the land for $500,000 to build condominium complex.

The department’s Permit Board will likely consider at its Oct. 6 meeting whether to consider the site as a state historic landmark, P’Pool said. The department would then advertise in The Natchez Democrat that it’s considering the site as a landmark and ask for public comment.

The Permit Board would then vote at the next meeting &045; which will probably be held in November &045; whether to declare the site a historic landmark.

&uot;And if the land is designated as a landmark, (the developers) would have to have their plans approved by Archives and History,&uot; Brown said.

When considering a site for recognition as a state historic landmark, the Permit Board uses the same criteria the federal government uses to name a site to the National Register of Historic Places.

According to the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation’s Web site, those criteria include the quality of significance in American history, architecture, archeology, engineering, and culture is present in districts, sites, buildings, structures, and objects that possess integrity of location, design, setting, materials, workmanship, feeling, and association and that:

4Are associated with events that have made a significant contribution to the broad patterns of our history,

4Are associated with the lives of persons significant in our past,

4Embody distinctive characteristics of a type, period, or method of construction, or that represent the work of a master, or that possess high artistic values, or that represent a significant and distinguishable entity whose components may lack individual distinction or

4Have yielded, or may be likely to yield, information important in prehistory or history.

In addition to the Permit Board’s approval, plans will have to be approved by the Historic Preservation Commission and must also be submitted to City Engineer David Gardner, who will make sure the development passes muster with specifications the Corps of Engineers has given to the city for projects to be built on the bluff.

Worley and Brown’s contract with the city provided for 72 units to be built, which Worley and Brown originally said would be done in two six-story buildings, for a total investment of more than $19 million.

However, at the Historic Preservation Commission’s Sept. 19 meeting, they said that due to the commission and public’s concerns about the size of the buildings, they would be open to taking out the top story, reducing the complex to about 53 units.

The developers said during the commission’s Sept. 19 meeting a delay in approval by the commission might shuttle the plan altogether, since many regional contractors will soon be too busy with post-hurricane construction to take on the project.