We don’t disagree with Crystal Surdyk, city development director, that a local preservation ordinance is needed in Jamestown.

We wholeheartedly disagree that the ordinance currently under discussion is needed.

The reasoning is simple – it’s hard enough to redevelop derelict old buildings that could most benefit from the tax credits and grant programs a local preservation ordinance is meant to help secure. We used the Arcade Building as an example of just such a building last week, but the same holds true for most buildings that the current ordinance would give the city tremendous authority over under the local preservation ordinance as it is currently drafted.

We can absolutely see developers walking away from projects or shying away from undertaking projects under the heavy handed language in this version of the preservation ordinance. There is also the unintended consequence of the city ending up in control of the very derelict buildings it is trying to save. Not to keep picking on the Arcade Building, but people seem to have forgotten how it ended up in its current precarious state. The building was purchased by the Arts Council of Chautauqua County at a time when the council was trying to preserve old buildings that were part of Jamestown’s history – including the old Wintergarden Theater and the Arcade Building. The cost of carrying those buildings helped create financial difficulties for the Arts Council and, at the same time, the buildings the organization tried to save continued to deteriorate, with the Wintergarden Theater eventually being torn down and the Wintergarden Plaza built in its place. The city should run from any scenario in which it could end up being owning these buildings.

People also seem to have forgotten the heavy lift it took to turn the former Argersinger’s building into the Chadakoin Center, or the decades of hard work it took to restore the former Erie-Lackawanna Railroad Station. The last thing those would have needed at the time was to have additional hurdles from the city in terms of new maintenance requirements or court action to take the building as those projects lingered in development limbo for years.

We don’t need to spend any additional time justifying or debating the local preservation ordinance as written. As long as it includes the maintenance and potential city ownership language that is included in the current draft then the ordinance is a bad one for those who take on a derelict historic building and for the city, which shouldn’t want to find itself owning a building like the Arcade Building.

A local preservation ordinance is needed, but this ordinance isn’t the one we need.