NATCHEZ &8212; The First Baptist Church on Main Street is still in desperate need of a facelift, city officials said Wednesday.

The city has still not seen progress from New Orleans-based Universal Missions, Inc., the new owners who took ownership of the building in November, City Building Inspector Paul Dawes said.

&8220;The structure is not in compliance with the regulations of the city,&8221; Dawes said. &8220;The roof structure is gone in places and very weak in others.&8221;

At a recent meeting, aldermen asked if the city had heard from the new owners. No one at the meeting had an answer.

The building has been empty, except when serving as storage for a time, since the 1970s, Dawes said.

When a tornado hit Natchez in 1998, he said, it damaged the roof, and nothing was ever done to repair it.

&8220;The weather took its course, and the roof collapsed,&8221; Dawes said. &8220;Now, they&8217;re going back in and putting a new roof on it. As

of yet, we don&8217;t have any building permits to accomplish that.&8221;

The city applied pressure to the building&8217;s previous owner to bring the building up to code, Mayor Phillip West said.

&8220;Then the owner donated it to the nonprofit group,&8221; West said. &8220;They had committed to cleaning the property up. That&8217;s where it still is. It&8217;s been five or six months since we met with them.&8221;

Dawes said while the building did not meet city codes, it was not a danger to surrounding buildings.

&8220;Structurally, the walls are sound,&8221; Dawes said. &8220;There is no danger of the building falling over onto other properties.&8221;

The owners are still in the developmental phase of things, Dawes said.

&8220;They are proceeding, but their progress has been slower than we&8217;d like to see,&8221; he said.

No specific plans for the building have been made public.

Alderwoman Joyce Arceneaux Mathis, chair of the board&8217;s public building committee, said she had not heard anything recently, either.

&8220;We are not seeing anything on the outside being done,&8221; Mathis said. &8220;If they are doing work inside, we don&8217;t know about it.&8221;

Mathis said the process of contacting the owners would normally be handled by a city planner, a position that is currently vacant.

&8220;Nobody has been making reports (to the board of aldermen) because we don&8217;t have a city planner to do it,&8221; she said.

The board and mayor have been interviewing potential candidates for city planner and will make a decision soon, West said.