Ten years ago city officials had high hopes for the redevelopment of the Furniture Mart building.

At the time, the $19 million project was going to be led by Ellicott Development with $1.5 million of DRI money earmarked for the project. The proposal was for two floors of office space, a 100-room hotel spread over five floors and rental apartments on the remaining three floors. The parking lot next to the building was to see a parking structure with 354 spaces, including 90 spaces available to the public. Retail space would have been created on the first floor.

A decade later, it’s deja vu all over again. Project costs have ballooned to $40 million in 10 years’ time, though the plan is roughly the same: ground floor retail, meeting and conference space, a boutique hotel and residential units.

It’s telling that two plans, drafted 10 years apart, both place high importance on redeveloping the Furniture Mart.

The Furniture Mart is a treasured part of Jamestown’s past – but the building is in desperate need of a facelift. There have been developers interested over the past several years, but plans have fallen apart because of either a lack of money, poor timing, lack of impetus to sell the building and a host of other reasons. Every few years, there is a push to bring the Furniture Mart into the 21st century only to see the former crown jewel of downtown enterprise remain stuck in the past.

The city will have roughly 8.5% of the $40 million baseline cost covered through a $1.34 million Regional Economic Development Council grant the city has already secured and $2 million in DRI funding. There may never be a time when the city has this much to put toward the Furniture Mart, especially with a new unnamed developer working on the project. If now isn’t the time, will this project’s time ever come?

For years city officials have had high hopes for the Furniture Mart building only to find themselves disappointed. We hope this time will be different, because construction costs aren’t going to get cheaper the longer the Furniture Mart sits in its current state. The project cost is now more than twice the 2016 estimates. We shudder to think what the project may cost if the Furniture Mart decays for another 10 years.

It feels like the time for a Furniture Mart project is now or never before the building is too far gone to have a new future.