Once a bustling Boston Police station house, the building at 872 Morton St. just yards away from the intersection at Norfolk Street is an abandoned wreck, its surroundings a neighborhood pit.

The detritus of 23 years of decay – discarded alcohol bottles, wayward shopping carts, worn sneakers, a weather-beaten sofa, assorted trash – litters this neglected parcel of city-owned land that sits along a well-traveled roadway and across the street from the Morton Street commuter rail station.

The police moved from their old Station 3 building to new quarters at the crossing of Blue Hill Avenue in July 1988, leaving behind an old, contaminated brick building that has over the intervening years come to deface the landscape at the edge of Mattapan.

Plans have long been in place calling for the property to be demolished and the property to be used as a staging area for the reconstruction of the nearby structurally-deficient Morton Street bridge.

But the disposition of the eyesore building and the cluttered land appears to be victim to scheduling problems for the bridge project by the Massachusetts Department of Transportation. Construction was originally slated to start in spring 2010, according to agency documents from 2008. Then last year, transportation officials told neighborhood residents that construction would occur in October 2011. Now, agency aides say bids for the $7.4 million bridge rehab will be advertised that month, pushing construction back further.

“They have to come back to us and let us know what their schedule is and what their timetable is,” said Barbara Crichlow, a community activist who compared the vacant building to an “old piece of furniture that’s been sitting there.”

City Hall officials said they would send a clean-up crew over to the property after Reporter inquiries this week.

The last public meeting on the bridge repair proposal appears to have occurred last December, according to a search of the transportation agency’s website, when department officials briefed residents on the plans, which include closing down a portion of Morton Street over ten days in order to quickly reconstruct the bridge. The project is part of Gov. Deval Patrick’s accelerated bridge-repair program that is aimed at eliminating years of traffic delays through speedier construction.

But a plan presented to neighborhood residents in May 2010 – which involved detouring vehicles through Norfolk and Evans streets – drew concerns about traffic congestion and about how emergency vehicles would get through the construction area.

“When they shut down that bridge, it’s going to be chaotic,” City Councillor Charles Yancey said this week, adding that he has not seen a written safety plan.

As for the building, the city is scheduled to handle the demolition, with the state’s transportation agency picking up the $300,000 tab. The original plan had the state Department of Transportation leasing the property and demolishing the building. But because of state regulations, the transportation agency was prevented from taking down the former station, City Hall officials said.

Evelyn Friedman, the director of the city’s Department of Neighborhood Development, said bidding for the demolition will be solicited soon.

After the building has been demolished and the bridge work completed, her agency will ask the community for input on proposals for future use of the property, she said.

The parcel, which is fronted by a bus stop, is in a prime location in a busy business district, near restaurants and other stores.

As far back as 2004, a developer had planned to demolish the station and build condominiums. But the proposal was hit by a downturn in the housing market and a plan to switch to constructing apartments never got off the ground.