By Susan Redden

sredden@joplinglobe.com

CARTHAGE, Mo. — An agreement that Missouri Southern State University take over the former McCune-Brooks Hospital building in Carthage might be in question.

Bruce Speck, university president, said no decision has been made by the university’s Board of Governors, but financial concerns are causing officials to take another look.

“But the economic issues involved in taking on the building are big ones,” he said. “After some discussions, we’re realizing that moving ahead with the building would require a significant investment, and we don’t have it.”

Speck said the board has asked for a third-party review, and that an engineer’s report on the condition of the building has been completed and sent to board members.

The board should take up the question at its March 14 meeting, he said.

When the university started talks involving the building, Speck said, it was with the understanding that money would be available from the state for additional operating costs. Now, he said, there are questions that money will be available.

The agreement for the university to take over the building was reached after plans for a new hospital were announced. City and hospital officials said they did not want the large building in central Carthage to sit empty after hospital operations moved into a new building.

The agreement came when Julio Leon was president of the university. He stepped down last August, and Speck took over as president last month.

Mayor Jim Woestman said Carthage officials are worried that university officials “want to back out on the agreement.”

“The costs they’re talking about have been there since day one,” he said. “It’s not a new building.”

The uncertainty also applies to related plans for the regional crime lab now at MSSU to move into part of the former hospital. The lab was to be the first occupant of the building, in an area used for emergency services and radiology. The move for the crime lab was to come about six months after the hospital vacated the building, according to discussions in late December among city and university officials, officials with the Carthage R-9 School District, and others involved in the project.

Speck said building officials at MSSU estimated that the former hospital needs about $500,000 in roof repairs and other work.

“We began talking about it and realized that in addition to money for operations, there would have to be other significant investments, and we didn’t have it,” he said. “The board wanted to make sure our assessment was either validated or refuted by an external source, so they asked for a report from an outside engineering firm.”