Back in February, we wrote in this space that the city no longer had years to wait for something to be done to improve a former Crawford Furniture manufacturing building at 1061 Allen Street.

And we were right.

The city had a mere three-quarters of a year before the building caught fire.

Crystal Surdyk, city development director, and Mayor Eddie Sundquist did indeed sound alarms about the building, as Sundquist mentioned at the scene of Wednesday’s fire. The city had the state DEC and federal EPA involved and had kept the current owner under a lawsuit to bring the site up to code. But much like a fire last year that destroyed the former Jamestown Royal Upholstery building on East Crescent Street, a property that everyone knew was a problem was left to rot and eventually catch fire.

There has to be a better way.

Wednesday’s fire was preventable. Never mind the thousands of dollars of overtime the city will spend fighting the fire and then securing the scene. There should have been no danger to neighboring manufacturing businesses and no chance of injuries to both Jamestown’s paid firefighters and the neighboring volunteers firefighters who also responded to the scene.

The old Crawford Manufacturing building isn’t the last of Jamestown’s old industrial properties that need to be taken down. The city keeps an evolving list of properties, both residential and commercial, that are vacant to ensure they don’t fall victim to vandals or arson. The city Department of Development works in collaboration with the Jamestown Police and Fire departments as well as Board of Public Utilities in keeping an eye on such structures.

That passive approach has resulted in two massive fires. In our view, the city should dust off former Mayor Sam Teresi’s Industrial Renewal and Modernization Program. The program used CDBG, ARC, state and city funding to take down buildings before catastrophic fires or collapses — including the former Watson Manufacturing building on Harrison Street, Maddox Table on Harrison and Insitute streets, Pellican Manufacturing Company on Washington Street, part of the Dahlstrom Manufacturing Company complex on Buffalo Street and 14 other properties. Some of those plots are still vacant. Others found new uses, like the Rite Aid Pharmacy on North Main and Eighth streets or, in the case of the old Proto Tool site, as home to Weber Knapp and El Greco Furniture. Those weren’t easy or quick projects ­– but they were good projects that removed eyesores before they became public safety issues.

Jamestown has been proactive with these buildings before. It’s time for the city to again be proactive with these relics of its proud industrial history rather than simply waiting for either a new tenant to reuse a building or the next huge fire to burn one down.