With more than $30 million in potential Downtown Revitalization Initiative project applications listed, there will be a series of frank talks as city officials decide which projects get a slice of the city’s $10 million DRI pie.

It is obvious that not all projects listed in the city’s DRI application to the state will receive funding. The question is which projects are funded and how much they will receive. A proposal to use $400,000 to stabilize the Arcade Building will surely result in lengthy discussions.

On one hand, the Arcade Building is a throwback to Jamestown’s heyday. Built in 1898, the Arcade Building – also known as the Haglund Building – housed multiple businesses on Main Street, with retail, theaters, clubs, and studios. It was designed in the Richardsonian Romanesque style and contains many intact interior features, including molding, metalwork, tin ceilings, decorative woodwork, and fixtures.The right developer and an endless source of money could turn the building into something beautiful. Preserving history is preferable when it’s possible.

The key question is if preserving the building is economically feasible. Estimates generated in a 2017 condition assessment of the Arcade building performed by C&S Engineers Inc. on behalf of the Gebbie Foundation were that restoration of the Arcade Building would cost $16,420,000, stabilization would cost $1.455 million and demolition would cost $1,708,000. Those numbers are all likely more expensive now, and the 2017 numbers make one wonder just how much work the city is taking into consideration with a $500,000 stabilization project that is 80% funded by DRI money. We can’t imagine the full 2017 stabilization project has gone down in price over the past nine years.

With so many projects and so few dollars, city officials will face an interesting choice with the Arcade Building.

The building is a public safety building. Pedestrians on North Main Street have to walk in the street because the city has put concrete barriers on the sidewalk near the Arcade Building to keep pedestrians away from the building. That is certainly one argument to stabilize the building.

But is stabilizing the building simply throwing good money after bad if the building is so badly deteriorated that no developer can make a rehabilitation project work because of the exorbitant costs? If demolition is considered, what is the plan for the space in the future?

There are much bigger proposed projects for the city’s DRI funding than the 4% of the DRI grant that is proposed to be spent on stabilizing the Arcade Building. But the future plans for the Arcade Building make that proposed $400,000 project one of the toughest calls to make.